By Fatos Bytyci PRISTINA, May 30 (Reuters) - Kosovo's police has stopped paying the salaries of some 300 ethnic Serb officers three months after they were suspended for refusing to take orders from ethnic Albanian authorities, officials said on Friday. The Serb officers rebelled days after Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority seceded from Serbia in February. They said they wanted to remain in the multi-ethnic force but would only obey commands from the resident United Nations police force. "They are still suspended but now without pay," Kosovo police spokesperson Veton Elshani told Reuters. "What will happen with them depends on the decision of the police inspection committee". Known as Kosovo Police Service (KPS), the force has more than 7,000 members, some 10 per cent of them Serbs, a figure slightly higher than the minority's strength in the new state. Serbia lost control over Kosovo in 1999, after NATO bombs expelled Serb forces to halt the killing of Albanians in a two-year war against separatist guerrillas. Run as a U.N. protectorate since then, Kosovo declared independence on Feb 17. Supported by Russia, Serbia has rejected its secession, and is pursuing what it calls the "functional division" of the territory's 2 million Albanians and 120,000 remaining Serbs, a policy the West says amounts to partition. As part of this policy, ethnic Serb public servants, teachers and doctors especially in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo are getting salaries from Belgrade and are asked to shun authorities in Pristina. Most of the rebel Serb police officers are getting salaries from Serbia's Interior Ministry. After violent protests in Serb parts of Kosovo in late February and March, the situation has been calm in recent weeks.But diplomats remain worried about tension, especially as a European Union mission that was supposed to take over policing tasks from the U.N. in June has been delayed. With Russia using its weight on the U.N. Security Council to prevent a formal transition of powers, a handover between the two bodies is unlikely to be agreed soon. (Additional reporting by Branislav Krstic; editing by Ellie Tzortzi and Myra MacDonald)
An activist of the "self-determination" political movement protests against Serbia's local and parlimentary elections in Pristina May 9, 2008. Parliamentary and local elections in Serbia are scheduled in Kosovo for May ...
