Kosovo and Serbia must de-escalate a tense situation in the region, the European Union's foreign policy chief said, after Serb protesters in northern Kosovo blocked main roads for a third day on Monday.
In recent weeks Serbs in northern Kosovo have responded with violent resistance to moves by Pristina that they see as anti-Serb.
"I know the two parts are willing to de-escalate and I strongly call on the two of them to do it," EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said as he arrived at a meeting of EU foreign ministers. "They have to come back to the dialogue, they have to overcome this tendency to fighting in the street."
The latest protests were triggered by the arrest of a former police officer on Saturday. He was part of a mass resignation of Serbs from the force last month, after Pristina said it would require Serbs to scrap Serbian licence plates dating to before the 1998-99 Kosovo War that led to independence.
For a third day on Monday, trucks and other heavy-duty vehicles blocked several main roads leading to two border crossings with Serbia. Both crossings were closed to traffic.
Polish troops, part of the NATO peacekeeping mission, were monitoring one of the six road blocks where trucks filled with gravel were parked in the village of Rudare close to the town of Mitrovica.
In the ethnically mixed area, police carrying automatic rifles were patrolling and guarding an election office where last week Serb protesters attacked police and smashed some of the building's windows.
Later on Monday, hundreds of supporters of Serbian rightist and ultranationalist organisations, some waving Russian flags, rallied in downtown Belgrade in support of Kosovo Serbs, demanding the Serbian government to intervene in Kosovo.
Protesters who marched through Belgrade city center waved flags and chanted "Kosovo is Serbia." There were no incidents.
Serbia enjoys support of Russia, its traditional Slavic and Orthodox Christian ally, in opposing Kosovo's independence. Belgrade is one of last European allies of Moscow after it launched an invasion on Ukraine.
Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, said Moscow would back Serbia's policies.
"We will continue to help Belgrade defend its legitimate national interests in relation to with Kosovo," she said at a briefing on Monday.
Kosovo had planned to hold local elections next Sunday in four municipalities after their mayors quit, but President Vjosa Osmani postponed the votes until April, citing security concerns.
EULEX, the European Union mission tasked with patrolling northern Kosovo, said a stun grenade was thrown at one of its armoured vehicles on Saturday evening, but no one was injured.
(Reporting by Sabine Siebold, Bart Meijer and Charlotte Van Campenhout in Brussels, Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade and Fatos Bytyci in Mitrovica; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Matthew Lewis)
