Kosovo border creeps south, for 24 hours

By Matt Robinson
ZUPCE, Kosovo, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The United Nations persuaded Serbs on Sunday to remove two checkpoints they had set up 20 kms (12 miles) inside the border of newly independent Kosovo.
For 24 hours, a blue portacabin topped with floodlights stood at the side of the road running north to the Kosovo-Serbia border, manned by Kosovo Serb police officers checking vehicles.
The regional U.N. police chief negotiated with the local Serb authorities to have the cabin removed with the help of Danish NATO peacekeepers, watched by a crowd of agitated Serbs.
One week after its Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia, there is a sense Kosovo is destined for partition, with the Serb-dominated north splitting away.
If partition came, the frontier between the two sides would run where the portacabin was placed in Zupce.
"It's their imaginary red line," one Western official at the scene commented. "They're playing games with us, saying this is where the border post should be."
Another blue box was placed on the eastern edge of the Serb-dominated strip of northern Kosovo and later removed.
Serbia has not said explicitly it wants to partition Kosovo, but in rejecting the province's secession it has promised to strengthen its grip on Serb areas, notably the north where just under half of the 120,000 Serbs live with their backs to Serbia.
Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority rejects partition.
"Every part of Kosovo is under the full control of NATO, Kosovo police and the United Nations," Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said on Sunday. "We are following closely these events and we are ready to face all challenges."
The United Nations mission on Sunday turned down a request from Serbia's Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, to visit Kosovo on Monday, a spokesman said. It cited "public security concerns".
The European Union is taking over supervision of Kosovo from the United Nations, which has run the territory since NATO went to war in 1999 to save its Albanians from Serb ethnic cleansing.
OCCUPATION
Serbs have rejected the mission as an "occupation".
The command structure in the Kosovo police service is now split between Serb and Albanian, the Serbs coordinating their work through the U.N. police and local municipalities, not through Pristina.
What few ties there were between the north and Pristina are breaking down. On Tuesday, mobs burned down the two border posts in the north, forcing NATO to intervene.
Danish, French and American soldiers now secure Gates 1 and 3-1. Kosovo police and customs officers have yet to return.
In Zupce, Serb cars without registration plates drove slowly up to the 'checkpoint' every 20 minutes, turning and driving back below Serbian flags flying from trees. A policeman waved through a Serb car, and stopped an Albanian to check his papers.
Next to Zupce, in the Albanian village of Cabra, Danish soldiers established a small base on Saturday, with armoured personnel carriers and tents.
If Kosovo was partitioned, Cabra would be cut off from the rest of Kosovo. (Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci and Branislav Krstic; Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Robert Woodward)