Nato steps in as Serbs torch Kosovo border post

Nato peacekeepers in newly independent Kosovo intervened yesterday as Serb mobs opposed to its secession attacked border posts and police fled.

Serbs burned down one border post and were attacking a second, a Kosovo police spokesman said. Police manning the post called for help from the Nato peacekeeping force, KFOR, which said it was stepping in.

"KFOR is going to intervene now," a force spokesman said. He declined to say which troops of the 35-nation, 17,000-strong force were being deployed.

The violence highlights the challenge facing a European Union law enforcement mission preparing to deploy in the Albanian-majority territory which has been under UN administration for nearly nine years.

"We are inches from partition," said a Western official.

He said he believed it was "only a matter of time before KFOR closes the bridges" that cross the River Ibar in the flashpoint city of Mitrovica, dividing Kosovo Serbs from Albanians.

Some two million Albanians live in Kosovo alongside around 120,000 remaining Serbs. Half of these are concentrated in an area running north from Mitrovica to the Serbian border, the rest in isolated enclaves further south.

A spokesman for the EU's International Civilian Office, whose Dutch leader Pieter Feith is expected in Kosovo any day, said there was no plan to withdraw a small advance EU team from the north side of Mitrovica. They would stay on and carry out their mandate, he said.

"Protesters have destroyed the border crossing post at Gate 1 in Jarinje," a Kosovo police spokesman said. "No one has been injured." Serbs were also attacking a second post near Zubin Potok, he said.

Police took shelter in a tunnel there as more than 1,000 protesters tried to tear it down, Kosovo police sources said.

"We asked Nato to send a helicopter to evacuate our officers," a police sources said in Pristina. KFOR forces in the district include French, Danish, Belgian and American units.

Local Serbs backed by the Serbian government and Russia say the planned EU supervisory mission to Kosovo, which will deploy 2,000 police and justice officials, is illegitimate and warn that its authority will not be accepted. EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana arrived in Kosovo last night to congratulate leaders on Sunday's independence declaration, recognised by most major Western powers but denounced by Serbia and Russia as illegal secession.