Protests were called for midday on Monday (11 a.m. British time) in Serb towns in Kosovo. A U.N. car was torched overnight in the northern Serb town of Zubin Potok, witnesses said, following hand grenades lobbed at EU and U.N. buildings in the Serb stronghold of Mitrovica within hours of the declaration.
ALL AVENUES EXHAUSTED
Most of the EU's 27 members will recognise Kosovo and will underwrite it with a 2,000-strong rule-of-law mission to take over supervision of the new state from the United Nations. But at least six EU members are reluctant.
"Today's events ... represent the conclusion of a status process that has exhausted all avenues in pursuit of a negotiated outcome," seven Western states on the U.N. Security Council said in a statement.
They said the status quo had "become unsustainable."
Almost two years of Serb-Albanian negotiations ended in December with neither side giving ground on the key issue of sovereignty.
Russia has warned that Kosovo's secession would have repercussions in breakaway regions across the world. China, which has claimed self-ruled Taiwan as its own since their split in 1949, said it was "deeply concerned" by the development.
But Kosovo Albanians say there is no going back after Serb forces killed thousands and drove out almost one million in a two-year war against separatist guerrillas. NATO bombed for 11 weeks in 1999 to force a withdrawal of Serb forces, and the United Nations took control.
The Serb-dominated north has resisted attempts by the U.N. mission to extend its writ north of the River Ibar.
The new EU mission will face the same challenge. Some analysts have long predicted that de facto, although not legal, partition has been Belgrade's "Plan B" all along.
"In the next period Serbia will function as a state in Kosovo in the areas where Serbs live as the majority," Serb Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said in Mitrovica, speaking in English. "It is so because Serbs recognise only one state, and that is Serbia."
