Kosovo: Serbs agree to dismantle barricades after talks

The roadblocks were erected on 10 December in response to the arrest of a former police officer

Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo appear to have eased following a decision to remove barricades blocking the main border crossing.

Ethnic Serbs in Kosovo began erecting the blocks on 10 December in protest at an ex-police officer's arrest.

The decision to end the blockade was made after protesters held late night talks with Serbia's president.

However, Aleksandar Vucic has warned that mistrust among Kosovo's Serbian minority remains high.

He has said that dismantling all the barriers could take days.

However, Kosovo police said that Merdare, Kosovo's primary border crossing with Serbia, had been reopened after roadblocks came down on the Serbian side.

Nato's peacekeeping force in Kosovo has welcomed the removal of the barriers, while the EU's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said "diplomacy prevailed in de-escalating tension".

The move comes just days after the Serbian army said it was at its "highest level of combat readiness" over increased tensions with Pristina.

Kosovo, which has an overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian majority, broke away from Serbia after a war in 1998-99.

Serbia does not recognise Kosovo as an independent state, nor do the ethnic Serbs who live there.

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina have ebbed and flowed since Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008.

But they have been running particularly high over the past few months, with ethnic Serbs withdrawing all co-operation with Kosovo authorities.

The trigger was a row over number plates. The government in Pristina demanded that ethnic Serbs should surrender the Serbian-issued vehicle licence plates that they had continued to use and replace them with "Republic of Kosovo" plates.

However, only a few people complied with the order before the given deadline and Pristina's plan to impose fines on the holdouts sparked a mass resignation of ethnic Serbs from all of Kosovo's national institutions in November.

This included police, with more than 600 ethnic Serb officers handing in their badges.

Attempts by the European Union, Nato and the US to mediate the situation had failed to make a diplomatic breakthrough.

Then, an ethnic Serb former police officer, Dejan Pantic, was arrested earlier this month on suspicion of attacking the Kosovo force, re-escalating the tensions.

On Wednesday, a judge in Kosovo ordered Mr Pantic's release from custody.

Responding to the decision to dismantle the barricades, Serbia's Prime Minister Ana Brnabic on Thursday expressed her thanks to Serbs in Kosovo for "finding the strength to respond to brutal terror and aggression".

However, she added that she didn't think the removal of the barricades would mean an end to what she described as Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti's "provocations".

In a post on social media, Mr Kurti said that it was good that the barricades were being removed without the intervention of Kosovo police.

"They put up the barricades themselves, they removed them themselves," he said. "In other words, those who blocked themselves have tired in vain."

The EU and US have said they have received assurances from Kosovo's authorities that peaceful protesters will not face any legal action.