EU withdrawal of staff ‘will not divide Kosovo’

Pieter Feith, the European Union envoy supervising Kosovo in its first years of independence, said the withdrawal of EU preparatory staff from the tense Serb-dominated northern area last week would not reinforce the week-old state’s partition along ethnic lines.

“We have temporarily brought back our personnel but we will maintain our office in the north,” Mr Feith said amid Serb demonstrations rejecting independence for the mostly ethnic Albanian territory.

The UN administration in office in Kosovo since 1999, when Nato pushed Serb forces out, could remain prominent in areas with “initial sensitivities” about splitting from Serbia, Mr Feith told the Financial Times. Serbs have rejected the EU’s plan to send 2,000 police and justice officials in the coming weeks.

EU officials will insist on Kosovo’s territorial integrity and will eventually want to exercise their mandate in Serb communities too.

“This country should not be partitioned. It should not end up even with soft partition and the creation of an entity [in the north] which would be severed in its links with the central government,” Mr Feith said.

“The overall aim remains creation of a multi-ethnic state, and not to do anything less than that.”

The EU has toughened its stance against Serbia following last week’s riots in Belgrade, in which anti-independence protesters torched the US embassy, as well as several EU and other foreign embassies.

Western officials have accused Slobodan Samardzic, Serbia’s minister for Kosovo, of inciting disorder – both in Belgrade and along Kosovo’s northern border – since Kosovo Albanian leaders declared independence on February 17. Mr Samardzic and other nationalist-leaning ministers suggested the main fault lay with the US and other countries that had recognised Kosovo.

Cameron Munter, the US ambassador, also warned Serbian leaders to avoid such justifications for attacks on diplomatic missions. “That kind of incendiary language . . . is leading further to the diplomatic isolation of Serbia, which is in nobody’s interest,” Mr Munter warned.

On Sunday, Vojislav Kostunica, Serbia’s nationalist-leaning prime minister, invited Washington to annul its decision on recognising Kosovo.

The US state department on Friday recalled all non-essential embassy staff and dependants, repeating a step it took in the 1990s up to Nato’s aerial bombardment against the former regime of Slobodan Milosevic.