KOSOVO: KOSOVO'S PRIME minister has denounced Belgrade's suggestion that it will control parts of his new country, effectively dividing it into separate ethnic-Albanian and Serb regions.
"We understand and respect peaceful reactions, guaranteed by the law, but we will not allow the territorial integrity of Kosovo to be compromised," said Hashim Thaci, the former rebel who as premier of Kosovo declared its independence on February 17th.
His comments came a day after top Serb officials pledged to provide services and security for areas where Kosovo's 100,000 or so Serbs live - north of the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica and dotted around the rest of the fledgling state in smaller enclaves.
Serbs are marching every day in Mitrovica to protest against independence, and border posts between Kosovo and Serbia have been attacked by Serb mobs; the enclaves - surrounded as they are by Kosovo's 1.9 million Albanians - have been relatively quiet.
"I am constantly in contact with Nato to prevent anyone from touching even one inch of Kosovo's territory," Mr Thaci said in the village of Racak, where a Serb massacre of Albanian civilians in January 1999 was a catalyst for the Nato bombing campaign that forced Serb forces from Kosovo.
Serbian economy minister Mladjan Dinkic said yesterday that Belgrade should stop paying Kosovo's foreign debt and put the cash towards investing in Serb projects there.
"Under the circumstances, Serbian taxpayers' money will go to Albanians . . . That's insane," he said of a debt that Belgrade's central bank puts at about €870 million. "We should save the money and redirect it to strengthen the Serbian communities in Kosovo."
Finance minister Mirko Cvetkovic said the Serbian state budget would probably be reviewed to allocate more cash to Serb areas of Kosovo.
The UN-backed plan that forms the basis of Kosovo's so-called supervised independence - which has been recognised by Washington and most major EU states - allows Belgrade to invest in Kosovan Serb enclaves and gives them broad autonomy.
But the plan forbids any division of Kosovo and calls on all areas to recognise the central government in Pristina and the EU mission that will oversee the political running of sovereign Kosovo and manage its police force, law courts and customs controls.
In Banja Luka, capital of the Serb-run region of Bosnia, hundreds of Serbs broke away from a 10,000-strong protest against Kosovo's independence and clashed with police near the town's US consulate.
The protesters hurled rocks and fireworks at the building, and smashed the windows of Croat shops, before police used tear gas to disperse them and arrested some 20 people.
In the northern Serb city of Novi Sad, thousands of people attended the funeral of a young man who was burned to death when rioters set fire to the US embassy in Belgrade last week. Some 130 people were injured and 200 arrested in the violence.
The dead man was Zoran Vujovic (21), a student whose family fled Kosovo after the 1998-1999 war.
