Serbia's defense minister visited a military base near the border with Kosovo after Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic declared the country on full alert, and despite continued protests by Kosovo's Serb minority, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti rejected a US call to back down in the current crisis with the Serbs.
The NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Kosovo has stepped up deployments in the four municipalities where there is unrest between the Serb minority and the Pristina government in the north of the country, with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warning of the gravity of the situation.
Since 26 May, local Serbs in northern Kosovo have been staging protests to prevent newly elected Albanian mayors from entering municipal buildings to begin their duties.
Mayors took office after winning local elections last month in four municipalities with mostly Serb residents who largely boycotted the election, with only 4,1500 voters out of 45,<> registered voters taking part.
NATO decided on Tuesday evening to send an additional 700 troops to the areas of tension, which was welcomed by the Kosovo government and criticized by Serbia as saying the peacekeepers had exceeded the legal scope of their work and were helping Kosovo police occupy municipal headquarters.
The United States called on Serbia and Kosovo to immediately de-escalate tensions in northern Kosovo and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken blamed Pristina for the worst violence erupting in the country in a decade, with 30 peacekeepers and dozens of Serbian protesters injured in recent clashes between the two sides.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, Blinken urged newly elected Albanian mayors to avoid operating in Serb-majority towns, saying Kosovo police should also withdraw, and Serbia should call on its troops to withdraw after the Serbian president put it on high alert and ordered military units moving toward the border.
Moscow also stressed the need to respect the rights of Kosovo Serbs who continue their protests.
However, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti rejected a U.S. call to defuse the crisis, announcing that Kosovo police would remain in the northern parts of the country, although their presence sparked violent protests.
Bloomberg news agency quoted Kurti as saying, on Wednesday, at the Globesec conference on international security in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia: "As long as there is this violent group abroad ready to attack. We should have our own units in the municipal buildings."
Allies said Kurti ignored calls to cancel local elections that sparked protests from the ethnic majority Serb in the north of the country. When Serbs boycotted the election, Kurti again ignored the concerns of his supporters to appoint ethnic Albanian mayors in predominantly Serb towns.
The UN Human Rights Council called on parties concerned with tensions in northern Kosovo to avoid divisive hate speech.
"We are concerned about the recent violence (in Kosovo) that has resulted in the injury of dozens of peacekeepers and protesters, the human rights of everyone living in Kosovo must be safeguarded," the council said on Twitter.