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Sunday February 24, 06:57 AM EU pulls out of divided Kosovo city PRISTINA (AFP) - The European Union has withdrawn staff from a divided Kosovo city following violent protests by the Serb minority, an EU envoy said Saturday as Russia warned Kosovo's independence could increase terrorism. The EU staff in the northern city of Mitrovica have been preparing a 2,000 strong EU police-judicial mission in Kosovo after its declaration of independence, which has been rejected by the Serbian government and Kosovo Serbs. "We have temporarily brought back our personnel, but we will maintain our office in the north," EU envoy Peter Feith told reporters in the southern Kosovo town of Prizren. He did not give details on the numbers involved but added: "We hope that conditions will soon allow us to resume our activities" in northern Kosovo. Mitrovica, where there are 80,000 Albanians in the south of the city and 20,000 Serbs in the north, has become a symbol of Kosovo's ethnic tensions. The Serbian government and the Serb minority that remains in Kosovo oppose the EU mission. Just before the independence proclamation, an explosion went off near the building housing the EU preparatory team in Mitrovica. Kosovo Serbs in the north have been protesting ever since Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia Sunday. Russia has also strongly opposed Kosovo's independence and blamed the West's support to the breakaway province for violent unrest in Belgrade this week targeting the US and European embassies. A top aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday said that Kosovo's move would strengthen terrorist forces. "With Kosovo now the gun has been cocked and no one knows when and where the shot will ring out," said Anatoly Safonov, Putin's envoy for international cooperation against terrorism and organised crime, in an interview with the Russian news agency Interfax. Safonov drew parallels with the Munich agreement of 1938, which permitted the German annexation of a part of what was then Czechoslovakia. "The danger is of unleashing a powerful machine of destruction, the consequences of which are unpredictable. It's a pity they have forgotten the lessons of the past, including the lesson of Munich in 1938," he said. He said Islamist "jihadists of terror" in Kosovo could now be expected to come out into the open. "Many countries consider that separatism and terrorism are links in the same chain. It's clear that terrorist tendencies are strengthening and the flouting of international law cannot fail to have this effect," Safonov said. "With recognition of Kosovo these forces have been given a signal that they can come out from underground." Putin on Friday said Kosovo had set a "terrible precedent, which will de facto blow apart the whole system of international relations." Russia's new representative to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said the same day that Moscow had the right to "use force" if NATO or the EU challenged the UN over Kosovo. About 1,000 Russians demonstrated against NATO and Kosovo's independence at a Moscow rally organised by the Communist Party on Saturday. The Greek communist party organised a similar event in Athens at which several hundred people burned the EU and US flags. Serbian officials and media have welcomed Russia's support in opposing Kosovo's independence. "Russia enters in war for Kosovo!," read the front-page headline of Belgrade-based daily Press on Saturday in response to a criticism of the West by Putin and other Russian officials. The Press quoted a senior official of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, Aleksandar Vucic, saying that "only Russians could stop NATO's fascist measures in Kosovo." It also quoted a Kosovo Serb leader, Goran Bogdanovic, as predicting a new "dispute among the great powers" over Kosovo. Serbia's Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, again attacked the United States for supporting the declaration of independence by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. "The main culprit for all the troubles that occurred since February 17 is the United States," Samardzic said, according to the Tanjug news agency.
