Print

Mail

wiki links

Embassies guarded after Serb riots

The wreck of a burnt-out car lies in front of a McDonald's restaurant after an anti-Kosovo independence rally in Belgrade on Thursday. PHOTO: AFP

Police yesterday stood guard outside the US and other Western embassies damaged in rioting overnight in the Serbian capital that killed at least one person.

Rioters broke into the US mission on Thursday night and set fire to offices and to police posts outside the building. The nearby Croatian embassy was also attacked, and fire damaged a residential building next door.

The rioting -- four days after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in a move widely recognized by the US and other world powers -- was the worst in the Serbian capital since 2000, when pro-democracy protesters confronted the security forces of Communist-era strongman Slobodan Milosevic in an uprising that led to his ouster.

In Kosovo, authorities stepped up security at the border with Serbia yesterday for fears of an influx of militants from Serbia.

A spokesman for Kosovo police said there was no ban on movement across the border, but authorities were restricting the traffic into Kosovo.

Riot police fought running battles on Thursday with vandals who looted dozens of shops following a state-sponsored demonstration against Kosovo's independence that drew nearly 200,000 people.

At the US embassy, one person was found dead inside, possibly a rioter, news reports said.

Belgrade's medical emergency center said 96 people -- one-third of them policemen -- were treated for light injuries.

More than 100 people were arrested, police said.

A McDonald's restaurant in the city center was still smoldering yesterday.

Shopkeepers put up plastic tarps and glass panels to cover smashed front windows. Window displays at sporting goods stores and other shops stripped clean by looters were bare yesterday.

Many of the shops spared by vandals had hung Serbian flags and pasted signs reading "Kosovo is Serbia" on their windows.

More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence, including the US, Britain, France and Germany.

But Serbia's government -- backed by Russia, China and Spain, among others -- has rejected the declaration by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership.

Kosovo's minority Serbs also refused to accept the declaration and have shown their anger by destroying UN and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging rallies in their stronghold in northern Kosovo.

Pro-Western politicians accused hard-line nationalists in Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's government of inciting the violence to demonstrate Serbia's anger over Kosovo's unilateral move to secede.

Serbian Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac of the EU-oriented Democratic Party called Thursday "one of Belgrade's saddest days."

The leader of the pro-Western Liberal Democratic Party, Cedomir Jovanovic, blamed Kostunica's "abnormal policies" for inspiring the riots.

The UN Security Council condemned "in the strongest terms the mob attacks against embassies in Belgrade." The US ambassador to the UN, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he was "outraged" by the attack.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said yesterday that the violence would affect negotiations on an agreement to prepare Serbia for eventual EU membership. He said talks on the deal would have to wait until things "calm down."

"The embassies have to be protected -- that's the obligation of a country," Solana said as he arrived in Brdo Pri Kranju, Slovenia, for a meeting of EU defense ministers.

Kosovo, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, has been under UN administration since 1999, when NATO launched airstrikes to halt a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

NATO has more than 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo.

Internationally mediated talks on Kosovo's future broke down last year over the ethnic Albanian leadership's insistence on full statehood and Serbia's refusal to relinquish a land Serbs consider the ancient cradle of their state and religion.

Also see: ANALYSIS: Kosovo declaration raises issue of Taiwan's future
This story has been viewed 1333 times.