ABOUT 4,000 Kosovo Albanians protested yesterday against a new European Union police and justice mission, claiming that the terms of its deployment would lead to the division of the fledgling state along ethnic lines, writes DANIEL McLAUGHLIN
The Eulex mission will officially start work in Kosovo this week and gradually roll out across the new country. It is taking over from the United Nations mission which has run it since 1999, when Nato bombing halted a Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian rebels and ended Belgrade's control over the region.
Kosovo officially declared independence in February.
Following months of delays, the UN gave clearance to Eulex after diplomats persuaded Serbia to accept a six-point plan under which police, customs officers and judges in Serb-dominated areas of Kosovo would remain under a UN umbrella, while their Albanian counterparts would work with Eulex. The government in the capital Pristina rejects the UN plan and says it violates Kosovo's constitution and will only deepen ethnic divisions.
With mostly Serb northern Kosovo refusing to recognise Pristina's independence and taking orders from local leaders and Belgrade, critics of the six-point plan say it will undermine the country's sovereignty and hasten its formal partition into Albanian and Serb areas.
Albin Kurti, leader of a prominent ethnic-Albanian group called Self-Determination, told banner- waving demonstrators in central Pristina that Eulex was "masking Kosovo's partition" and condemned the mission's pledge to be "status neutral" - in effect avoiding recognition of Kosovo's independence.
While welcoming Eulex, Kosovo's leaders flatly reject the UN plan on how it should operate. "You should forget the six-point plan," prime minister Hashim Thaci said this week. "It will not be implemented in Kosovo and it is no longer an issue."