Get free Kosovo updates
We’ll send you a myFT Daily Digest email every morning with the latest news from Kosovo.
Serbia’s president says he has no intention of ordering his country’s forces to cross the border with Kosovo, despite US officials warning of an “unprecedented” buildup of Belgrade.
In a statement released to the Financial Times on Saturday, Aleksandar Vučić said he would withdraw Serbian forces in the region as an escalation of the conflict would be counterproductive to Belgrade’s EU aspirations.
“Why would this be beneficial for Belgrade?” said Vučić. “What would be the idea? To destroy the position we spent a year building? Destroy that in a day? Serbia doesn’t want war.”
On Friday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the U.S. had observed an “unprecedented display of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks and mechanized infantry units” on the border with Kosovo, calling it a “very destabilizing development.”
“We call on Serbia to withdraw these forces from the border and help lower the temperature and tensions,” Kirby said, adding that Vučić and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had discussed ways to defuse the situation.
International efforts to ease tensions have increased in recent days after a violent clash near a monastery in Serb-majority northern Kosovo left at least four people dead, including a Kosovar police officer.
Kirby said the attack was “well coordinated and planned,” adding that the size of the weapons cache later found threatened the safety of Kosovo officials and international personnel, including NATO troops.
Vučić told the FT that Washington’s warnings were disproportionate as the number of Serbian forces on the ground was decreasing.
“Last year we had 14,000 men near the administrative border, today we have 7,500 and we will reduce that number to 4,000,” he said.
“Serbia’s deployment of troops to the administrative line is a complete lie. . . Serbia would not benefit from this as it would jeopardize its position in the EU-sponsored talks with Pristina.”
The EU has said it will only admit Serbia and Kosovo into the union once relations have normalized.
Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, held talks with Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti on Friday in which they discussed EU-sponsored dialogue as the only way out of the crisis.
After a brief but bloody war in the late 1990s, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia and most ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo never recognized its statehood. Serbian nationalists reject Pristina’s authority.
The EU, US and other Western powers have tried to broker talks, but although an agreement came close in March, the proposals collapsed due to disputed local elections in northern Kosovo, where the population is majority Serbian.
“[Serbs] “I want to turn back time” to a time when Kosovo was still theirs, Kurti told the Associated Press. “You are looking for a time machine. They want to turn the clock back 30 years. But that won’t happen.”
Recommended
Milan Radoičić, a Serbian hardliner in northern Kosovo, has claimed responsibility for this month’s attacks, saying he wanted to stoke resistance to Kurti’s government. The Belgrade authorities knew nothing about his plan and did not support him, he added.
Vučić and Kurti have both called in recent days for NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers to increase their presence in northern Kosovo. On Friday, NATO said it would do so, including by deploying hundreds of additional British troops.
“We will always ensure that our commander has the resources and flexibility that KFOR needs to fulfill its mandate,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Friday. “We stand ready to make further adjustments to KFOR’s posture if necessary.”
KFOR consists of around 4,500 soldiers.
Faced with Serbian discontent over the violence, Vučić was recently forced to reform his faction and call general and local elections. However, the presidency is not up for election.
“We want to have a clean mandate in the future and be a sovereign country,” Vučić said in a televised address on Friday. “The opposition demanded elections, they [succeeded]let them prepare.”