Molotovs hit Kosovo Serb house yard, Ceku hints at use of force in the north
Three Molotov cocktails were thrown at the house yard of Dragan Antic, a Serb, in the village of Berivojce near Kosovska Kamenica (east)
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Monday, October 27, 2008
Although six members of the Antic family were asleep in the house when the blast occurred, no one was hurt and no serious material damage was caused.
KFOR and members of the Kosovo police said after the investigation that one explosive device had fallen on a car, while the other two were thrown next to the wall of the yard and inside the yard itself.
Berivojce is an ethnically mixed village.
Meanwhile, former Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku has called on the government in Pristina to declare the northern part of Kosovo "a zone of special interest".
"If this part of Kosovo is declared a zone of special interest, that means presence of state officials of Kosovo must be secured there. Those officials would work there and be the state authority of Kosovo," he told reporters on Sunday, adding that such measures in the Serb-dominated north which rejects Pristina's authority would be "temporary".
Ceku, who is the leader of the Social Democratic Party, said the Thaci government has no concrete plan to spread its authority in the north.
For his part, Ceku did no rule out using force to achieve this.
"Use of force is the task of every security organ. I would not say use of violence, but of force, if necessary. The functioning of the state and government in every part of the country is the task of institutions, which have their instruments and powers. Force is one of those powers," he elaborated.
More than 600 KFOR soldiers of the Operational Reserve Force Battalion (ORF) from Germany and Austria were deployed in northern Kosovo on Sunday.
These troops are planed to stay in northern Kosovo until November 17 and they will be located in camps in the village of Novo Selo near Vucitrn, in the village of Smrekovnica near Kosovska Mitrovica, while one part will be stationed in Devic, the statement specified.
The German-Austrian battalion will conduct operations in the northern part of the province in the following weeks, as part of routine operation exercise, aimed at training the NATO troops and their familiarizing with the situation in Kosovo.
