Clashes break out in Kosovo after opposition figure arrested | Reuters

PRISTINA Protesters besieged the central police station in Kosovo on Monday, hours after the arrest of a prominent opposition politician, lobbing concrete and stones at police who returned fire with teargas.

Several hundred protesters converged on the central police station at the urging of the opposition Self-Determination party, which said its founder, Albin Kurti, had been arrested.

Kurti last week released teargas in Kosovo’s parliament, part of a long-running protest against a landmark deal brokered by the European Union to improve relations between Kosovo and former master Serbia.

“Police have arrested Albin Kurti,” Self-Determination said on its Facebook page. “They are sending him to the main police station in Pristina. We invite all activists, supporters and citizens to gather in front of the police station.”

Several hundred converged on the station in the centre of the capital, throwing stones and concrete ripped up from a square being repaved. The projectiles smashed windows as police fought back with teargas.

Kosovo declared independence with the backing of the West in 2008, almost a decade after NATO went to war with 11 weeks of air strikes to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanian civilians by Serbian forces trying to crush a guerrilla insurgency.

The EU sees the 2013 deal, still being implemented, as a way to cement stability in the former Yugoslavia, but Kurti – who was jailed by Serbia for agitating against Belgrade rule during the 1990s – says it represents a threat to Kosovo’s hard-won sovereignty.

His party, which he no longer formally leads, has been disrupting the work of parliament in protest at the accord, and last Thursday Kurti calmly opened the tar gas canister and kicked it around the chamber to spread the gas, causing two deputies to faint.

(Writing by Matt Robinson, editing by Larry King)

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