Belgrade cleans up after anti-Kosovo riots
Police belatedly stood guard outside the British, US and other Western embassies in Belgrade today after they were attacked overnight by rioters protesting at Kosovo’s independence.
Mobs broke into the US building and set fire to offices and to police posts outside. The British Embassy suffered minor damage.
The rioting – four days after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in a move widely recognised by 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 removal.
Riot police fought running battles 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.
Pro-Western politicians accused hard-line nationalists in Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica’s government of inciting the violence to demonstrate Serbia’s anger over Kosovo’s unilateral move.
The UN Security Council condemned “in the strongest terms the mob attacks against embassies in Belgrade.”
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said 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,” Mr Solana said.
Belgrade’s medical emergency centre said 96 people – a third of them policemen - were treated for light injuries. More than 100 people were arrested.
Today shopkeepers were putting up sheets of plastic across the smashed front windows of sporting goods stores and others stripped clean by looters.
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 recognised Kosovo’s declaration of independence, including the United States, 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 their stronghold in northern Kosovo.
Kosovo, which is 90 per cent ethnic Albanian, has been under UN administration since 1999, when Nato halted a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Nato has more than 16,000 peacekeepers in Kosovo.
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