NATO troops secure areas in Kosovo

A worker produces the flag of Kosovo at the flag center in Dokkum, the Netherlands, on Monday. PHOTO: EPA

Japan recognized Kosovo as an independent state yesterday as NATO troops secured a hostile strip of north Kosovo.

"Japan hopes that Kosovo's independence will contribute to the stability of the region in the long term," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that Tokyo wished to continue friendly ties with Serbia.

Japan joins 25 other countries, including Britain and the US, in recognizing an independent Kosovo.

Meanwhile, NATO troops secured a hostile area after Serb riots in Mitrovica killed one Ukrainian UN police officer and forced the pullout of UN personnel from the Serb stronghold.

The violence was the worst since Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia on Feb 17 and highlighted the risk of the new state's partition along ethnic lines.

Soldiers in armored personnel carriers held key positions in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, where Serbs bitterly opposed to Kosovo's independence clashed with UN police and NATO peacekeepers on Monday.

Bridges over the Ibar River that divides the town's Serb north from the Albanian south were closed. On the north side of the main bridge, Serbs had placed razorwire and upturned garbage containers across the road.

The UN mission that has run Kosovo since the 1998 to 1999 war said the withdrawal of its police and civilian staff from the Kosovo Serb stronghold of north Mitrovica was only temporary, but could not say when they would return.

A Ukrainian police officer serving with the UN died overnight of injuries sustained in the riots, a Kosovo police spokesman said. He declined to confirm the cause of death.

The violence, sparked by a UN police operation to retake a UN court seized three days earlier by protesting Serbs, cast further doubt on the deployment in the north of an EU police mission intended to take over much of the role of the UN administration in Kosovo.

This left NATO holding the line, but the 16,000-strong peace force has ruled out policing the new state, a job the UN is supposed to hand over to the EU over a four-month transition.

"We will maintain our intention to deploy the mission throughout the territory of Kosovo," the EU's new Kosovo envoy, Pieter Feith, told a news conference.

NATO said its troops came under automatic gunfire as Serbs converged on the court following the dawn raid. Serb media reports said about 70 civilians were wounded, along with dozens of UN police and soldiers of the 16,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force.

The EU last month withdrew a small advance team from north Mitrovica for security reasons. A UN spokesman said UN staff would return "as soon as the security situation permits."

Backed by big-power ally Russia, Serbia has rejected Kosovo's secession and its recognition by the US and a majority of the EU's 27 members.

Around 120,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo among 2 million ethnic Albanians. Almost half live in the north, adjacent to Serbia and in complete isolation from the capital Pristina. They reject the incoming EU mission as "occupiers."

Russia on Monday demanded restraint by NATO and Serbia said it was consulting Moscow on joint steps to protect Kosovo Serbs.