Belgrade: KFOR stepped outside UNSCR 1244

Goran Bogdanovic, Borislav Stefanovic and Erhard Buehler met on Thursday afternoon in the northern Kosovo town of Zubin Potok. They were also joined by the EU representative in Kosovo.

Head of the Belgrade negotiating team in the dialogue with Pristina Borislav Stefanovic says the outcome of the talks with the KFOR commander today was "bad".

The Serbian official accused the NATO-led force in the province of "going beyond its mandate".

"It is clear that KFOR is stepping outside the boundaries of UN Resolution 1244," Stefanovic said while talking with residents of the village of Zupce.

He arrived there after yet another meeting with KFOR Commander Erhard Buehler.

Stefanovic added that "it seems that someone from the international community is trying to back Pristina's decisions".

Stefanovic qualified the talks as long and difficult, and added that he and Minister for Kosovo and Metohija Goran Bogdanovic are not satisfied with the outcome, and that they will continue with the talks on Friday.

KFOR, said he, "affirmed the position in today's meeting that Pristina's demands are legitimate as far as they are concerned".

Buehler, said Stefanovic, has "orders from his command to enforce decisions" of the Kosovo Albanian government - that is, to place their customs officials on the administrative line.

"We find this unacceptable," Stefanovic told.

Earlier on Thursday, Buehler said that KFOR controls both Brnjak and Jarinje, that "for him there is only one police under one command", so that he "must back it and offer it assistance if that police ask him to do that".

He also said that "perpetrators of the murder of a Rosu member and the burning of the Jarinje crossing must be held responsible".

The situation in the province is described as "tense", while in Belgrade Serbian Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac told reporters that the Serbian Army was "in contact with KFOR".

Last night, Bogdanovic and Stefanovic discussed the crisis whit Buehler at the Jarinje post to agree that KFOR should take control of it.

"We have received guarantees that there will be no special Kosovo police units Rosu, that Albanians will not be at the crossings and that there would be no customs," Bogdanovic told Beta news agency.

But Zubin Potok Mayor Slavisa Ristić said that beside KFOR, ethnic Albanian customs workers were at the Brnjak crossing, and that for this reason local Serbs today blocked the road in the village of Zupce.