Kosovo asks NATO to airlift a Serb detainee as tensions rise - Reuters

PRISTINA, Dec 22 (Reuters) - (This Dec. 22 communicative has been corrected to accidental that constabulary officers were transported by NATO via crushed routes, not by helicopter, successful paragraph 7)

Kosovo has asked NATO troops to airlift a erstwhile Serb policeman who was detained 2 weeks agone but could not beryllium transferred elsewhere due to the fact that section Serbs demanding his merchandise acceptable up barricades to forestall him being moved.

Dejan Pantic was arrested connected Dec. 10 connected charges of assaulting serving constabulary officers during a erstwhile protest.

Tensions person been moving precocious since past arsenic thousands of Kosovo Serbs protest, demanding the country's Albanian-majority authorities pulls its constabulary unit retired of the north, wherever the Serb number is concentrated.

Local Serbs, who fig astir 50,000 successful bluish Kosovo, reiterated astatine a protestation connected Thursday that they would not region the roadblocks unless Pantic is released.

"He (Pantic) should beryllium successful a detention halfway and not successful a constabulary presumption and that's wherefore we person asked our planetary partners to transportation him successful an capable facility," Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla told a quality league successful Mitrovica, conscionable a fewer kilometers distant from the archetypal barricade.

NATO's ngo successful Kosovo, KFOR, is the lone unit that has helicopters. Kosovo has nary helicopters and would request NATO's support to prosecute one.

KFOR has already transported via crushed routes 9 constabulary officers successful caller days who were sick but incapable to get retired of the country aft the roads were blocked.

The NATO force, which has much than 3,000 troops connected the ground, said the KFOR commandant is the sole authorization to determine implicit Kosovo's airspace.

"Every petition that has been refused was because, arsenic successful the existent situation, determination were not the needed information conditions," KFOR said successful a written connection to Reuters without saying what petition has been refused.

Svecla said his constabulary unit could region the barricades but that helium wanted section Serbs oregon NATO troops to region them.

"For the involvement of stableness we are waiting for them to beryllium removed by those who acceptable them up oregon KFOR, but adjacent waiting has its end," helium said.

Kosovo's authorities has antecedently said radical astatine the barricades are equipped and immoderate constabulary involution could harm radical from some sides.

Ethnic Serb mayors successful bluish municipalities, on with section judges and immoderate 600 constabulary officers, resigned past period successful protestation implicit a Kosovo authorities determination to regenerate Serbian-issued car licence plates with ones issued by Pristina.

Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, editing by Deepa Babington and Grant McCool

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