Kosovo Serbs protest against EU mission

PRISTINA, Serbia, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Some 10,000 Serbs in a northern Kosovo town protested an EU plan to send a mission to Serbia's mainly ethnic-Albanian Kosovo province.

Marko Jaksic, a Kosovo Serb leader, told Tuesday's rally in the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica that Serbs won't accept the civilian and police mission of the European Union, the Serbian news agency Tanjug reported.

Jaksic said the deployment of the 1,800-member EU mission would endorse a U.N. plan that provides for internationally supervised independence of Kosovo province from Serbia.

Kosovo's Albanians and Serbs have undergone two years of talks on Kosovo's status. Those negotiations recently ended without agreement, leaving it to the U.N. Security Council to resolve the issue.

The rally voiced support for the Serbian government in Belgrade, which represents some 100,000 Serbs living in Kosovo.

The Belgrade government is offering large autonomy, while leaders of ethnic-Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population of 1.9 million, insist on independence from Serbia.

Kosovo has been U.N.-governed territory since 1999, when NATO peacekeepers were deployed to contain ethnic conflicts.