- Thursday, March 20PRISTINA, Kosovo - United Nations police began returning to a Serb-held town in northern Kosovo on Wednesday, two days after pulling out in the wake of clashes with protesters that left one officer dead and dozens injured.


The U.N. had left NATO peacekeepers in charge of Mitrovica _ reinforced by U.S. troops trained in riot control _ after the worst violence since Kosovo declared independence with Serbia a month ago.
The regional police commander for Mitrovica, David McLean, said police were returning "gradually" and setting up their operations and patrols on Wednesday. He said he expected to restore the mission "as quickly as possible."
On Monday, Kosovo Serb demonstrators exchanged gunfire with peacekeepers and attacked them with rocks, hand grenades and Molotov cocktails. More than 60 U.N. and NATO forces and 70 Kosovo Serb protesters wounded.
The policeman who died of injuries suffered from a hand grenade thrown by a protester was identified as 25-year old Ihor Kynal of Ukraine. A Serb demonstrator who was shot in the head was in a coma.
The U.N. has accused Serbia of complicity in the violence.
A senior Serbian government official dealing with Kosovo, Dusan Prorokovic, denied the allegations, saying that "all we have been doing is trying to calm the situation."
On Wednesday, Croatia, Bulgaria and Hungary also said they will recognize Kosovo, becoming the first of Serbia's neighbors in the Balkans to do so.
Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic quickly criticized the decision by the three countries.
"Every country that decides to recognize the illegally declared state of Kosovo breaches international law," Jeremic said during a visit to Athens, Greece.
Serbia recalled its ambassador to Japan and Canada Tuesday after the two countries recognized Kosovo's independence.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on all sides to refrain from violence and to work with each other "to promote security and stability in Kosovo," U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said at U.N. headquarters in New York.
Britain's U.N. Ambassador John Sawers said Tuesday that while most Kosovo Serbs are getting on in their lives, the violence in Mitrovica "showed the lengths to which some people ... in the Kosovo Serb community are prepared to go."
"There seem to be those who are deliberately stoking trouble in the north of Kosovo because they seem to want to see violence, they seem to want to have a confrontation. That is not our wish," he said.
Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo has been under U.N. control since 1999, when NATO launched an air war to stop Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
Serbia, which considers the territory its historic and religious heartland, says Kosovo's declaration of independence was illegal under international law.
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Associated Press writers Radul Radovanovic in Kosovska Mitrovica, Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations