MITROVICA, Kosovo (Reuters) – Minority Serbs in the north of Kosovo said on Saturday they were quitting their posts in state institutions including the government, police and courts to protest Pristina’s order for them to start using Kosovo vehicle licence plates.
The long-running licence plate row has stoked tensions between Serbia and its former province of Kosovo, which gained independence in 2008 and is home to a small ethnic Serb minority in the north that is backed by Belgrade.
Following a meeting of Serb political representatives in the north of Kosovo, Minister of Communities and Returns Goran Rakic said he was resigning from his post in the Pristina government.
He told reporters that fellow representatives of the 50,000-strong Serb minority in the north had also resigned from their positions in municipal administrations, the courts, police, and the parliament and government in Pristina.
Rakic said they would not consider returning to their jobs unless Pristina abolishes the order for them to switch their old car licence plates, which date to the 1990s when Kosovo was a part of Serbia, to Kosovo state plates.
He said they had also demanded the formation of a union of Serb municipalities giving Serb-majority districts greater autonomy.
Blerim Vela, chief-of-staff to Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani, accused Belgrade of seeking to destabilise Kosovo by backing Serbs in the north.
“Serbia is coercing and inciting Kosovo Serbs to abandon their jobs in Kosovo institutions,” Vela tweeted.
Kosovo’s government has said it will start issuing fines this month to Serb drivers using old pre-independence plates, and will confiscate vehicles that have not had their registration numbers changed by April 21, 2023.
Another roughly 40,000 ethnic Serbs, who live in parts of Kosovo that are majority ethnic Albanian, use licence plates issued by Pristina.
Kosovo’s main backers, the United States and the European Union, have urged Prime Minister Albin Kurti to postpone implementing the car plates ruling for another 10 months but he has refused.
(Reporting by Fedja Grulovic; Additional reporting by Fatos Bytyci in Pristina; Writing by Ivana Sekularac; Editing by Helen Popper)
