KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo — Serbia’s hard-line leaders on Saturday called the U.S. “the main culprit” in the violence that has broken out since Kosovo declared independence.
Several thousand Serbs chanting “Kosovo is Serbia!” and “Russia, Vladimir Putin!” protested peacefully in the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica, the sixth day of demonstrations against Kosovo’s break with Serbia. Russia backs Serbia’s fierce resistance to Kosovo’s secession.
On Thursday night, protesters in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, set fire to the U.S. Embassy, angered by the United States’ recognition of Kosovo. The U.S. and the European Union responded by demanding Serbia protect foreign embassies.
“The United States is the main culprit . . . for all those violent acts,” Serbian Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said in Belgrade.
Other Serbian leaders have called for calm after the riots.
But an aide to hard-line Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said any future violence also will be blamed on the U.S.
“If the United States sticks to its present position that the fake state of Kosovo exists . . . all responsibility in the future will be on the United States,” Kostunica adviser Branislav Ristivojevic said in a statement.
The comments were an indication that Serbia is drifting farther from the West and more toward ally Russia.
The vast majority of Kosovo’s population is ethnic Albanian, while Serbs represent about 10 percent of the region’s 2 million people.
Kosovo had formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists, which killed 10,000 people.
Kosovo’s minority Serbs have staged protests daily since the territory’s ethnic Albanian leadership proclaimed independence last Sunday.
