, Kosovo - NATO placed the Kosovo town of Mitrovica under de facto military law on Tuesday after riots by a Serb population hostile to independence killed one U.N. policeman and forced the pullout of U.N. personnel.


The NATO-led peacekeeping force KFOR and the United Nations mission ordered all local Kosovo Serb police officers to park their patrol cars and suspend normal duties.
With U.N. police already withdrawn, the order left French, Belgian and Spanish troops in sole control of law and order in the northern slice of Kosovo, where Serbs opposed to its February 17 secession from Serbia dominate the population.
"We have not organised martial law," KFOR commander General Xavier Bout de Marnhac told a news conference in the capital, Pristina. "There is no intent as far as I know for installing it for the time being."
He said Monday's riots had "crossed a red line with the deliberate intent to kill people, you know Molotov cocktails, fragmentation grenades and direct fire" aimed at U.N. and KFOR personnel.
"We are not going to tolerate that ... don't put us in a position to show it again tomorrow," the general said.
A column of U.S. troops, some in full riot gear, arrived on the south side of Mitrovica on Tuesday "to help out", as one soldier told Reuters. They are based in southeastern Kosovo.
At the main police station, three dozen Kosovo Serb police officers carried their holdalls and flak jackets out past Belgian armoured cars guarding the perimeter to the parking lot.
"Following yesterday's events KFOR has taken over authority for north Mitrovica and occupied the northern police station. U.N. police have ordered us to stay at home until further notice," Captain Milija Milosevic told Reuters.
A Ukrainian police officer serving with the United Nations died overnight of injuries sustained in the riots. Polish, French and Ukrainian officers were among 42 U.N. police and 22 KFOR soldiers injured.
The violence was the worst since Kosovo's Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia on February 17 and highlighted the risk of the new state's partition along ethnic lines.
TENSION AND BARRICADES
Soldiers in armoured personnel carriers secured key positions in the flashpoint town after Monday's riots. The main bridge over the river separating the Serb north from the Albanian south was closed. Razor-wire and upturned garbage containers blocked the way.
The violence was sparked by a U.N. police operation to retake a U.N. court seized three days earlier by protesting Serbs. The unrest has cast further doubt on the deployment in the north of a European Union rule-of-law mission in the coming two months.
It left NATO holding the line. But the 16,000-strong peace force has ruled out policing the new state, a job the United Nations is supposed to hand over to the EU.
About 120,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo among 2 million ethnic Albanians. Almost half live in the north, adjacent to Serbia and in complete isolation from the capital Pristina. They reject the incoming EU mission as "occupiers".
Backed by powerful ally Russia, Serbia has rejected Kosovo's secession and its recognition by the United States and a majority of the EU's 27 members.
Russia demanded restraint by NATO on Monday and Serbia said it was consulting Moscow on joint steps to protect Kosovo Serbs.
Serbia offered to govern the ethnic Serb areas, senior diplomatic sources told Reuters on Tuesday, in a plan that would effectively partition the newly independent state.
The proposal was made at the weekend by Serbia's Minister for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, but was rejected by Kosovo's United Nations administrators, they said.
"The proposal's goal seems to be the partition of Kosovo, literally for Serbia to govern in the enclaves," said one source. Another source in the U.N. mission UNMIK said this would be "a ratification of partition".