Kosovo Albanian protests causing "tensions, anxiety" among local Serbs - agency

BBC Monitoring International Reports - February 2, 2007 Friday

Text of report by Serbian independent news agency FoNet

Obilic, 2 February: Anxiety among the Serb population in Crkvena Vodica village near Obilic was today caused by a slogan hung on a power sub-station on which Albanian words "Independence", "Serbs to Serbia" and "The End of Serbia" [last one in English] were writen and signed by UCK [Kosovo Liberation Army].

The Serbs began to get increasingly anxious starting two days ago, following a protest by ethnic Albanians outside the police station in Obilic where a symbol of a piggy bank with a dollar next to it dominated the protest with the following question posed in one of the slogans: "How much more we should pay for independence?" - which was addressed to [UN special Kosovo envoy] Martti Ahtisaari.

Increased tensions are noticeable in Kosovo, to which protests in many places contribute, organized on the eve of the arrival of special UN envoy [Martti Ahtisaari] to Pristina and his revealing his proposal for solving Kosovo status.

Source: FoNet news agency, Belgrade, in Serbian 0930 gmt 2 Feb 07