Serbia, the US and the EU all condemned the closure by police of Serbian-run post offices in the north of Kosovo, with Serbia’s president appealing to Brussels to take action.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic accused Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti of attempting to spark conflict after Kosovo Police on Monday closed nine post offices run by Posta Srbije (Serbian Post) in the Serb-majority north of Kosovo.
The post office closures were part of the Pristina authorities’ continuing efforts to establish official control over the Serb-majority north.
“Kurti’s behaviour is an attempt to provoke a military conflict. We don’t want war, we want to preserve peace, but he is doing it deliberately, it’s organised, and with the support of certain Western powers,” Vucic said on Monday night in Belgrade.
“I personally spoke with [EU special envoy for Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Miroslav] Lajcak, I sent them an unequivocal message, so we will see what they will do next,” he added.
On Monday, Kosovo police raided nine Serbian Post branches in four Serb-dominated municipalities in northern Kosovo after the country’s Regulatory Authority of Electronic and Postal Communications, ARKEP, informed them that “illegal post offices” were operating there.
Both the United States and the European Union condemned the move. The US is “deeply disappointed” by the action, according to the US embassy in Pristina. “Kosovo’s uncoordinated actions put Kosovan citizens and KFOR [NATO’s Kosovo force] soldiers at greater risk, unnecessarily escalate regional tensions, and undermine Kosovo’s reputation as a reliable international partner,” it said.
European Commission spokesman Peter Stano criticised “a unilateral and uncoordinated step, which violates agreements reached under the EU-facilitated dialogue [between Belgrade and Pristina]”.
“As part of the arrangements regarding telecommunications reached in 2013 and the action plan agreed in 2015, both parties agreed to discuss postal services ‘at a later stage’, thereby acknowledging that the issue can only be addressed within the framework of the dialogue,” Stano said in a press release.
“We call on the Kosovo government to reconsider its decision and to find a negotiated solution to this issue in the framework of the EU-facilitated dialogue,” he added.
The operation came more than two months after Kosovo Police closed down six offices of Serbia-run financial institutions in four Serb-majority municipalities in the north.
The Kosovo authorities were aiming to implement a Central Bank decision on cash operations banning the use of Serbia’s currency, the dinar, for payments. Kosovo’s Serb-majority municipalities have continued using the dinar for payments since the end of the war in Kosovo in June 1999.
