PRISTINA (Reuters) -- Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci warned Serbia on Tuesday to forget any notions of controlling parts of the new country.

“We understand and respect peaceful reactions, guaranteed by the law, but we will not allow the territorial integrity of Kosovo to be compromised,” Thaci said.
Kosovo’s Albanian majority declared independence from Serbia with Western backing on February 17. Serbs in the north of Kosovo reject its secession, fuelling fears the country is destined for partition.
“I am constantly in contact with NATO to prevent anyone from touching even one inch of Kosovo’s territory,” Thaci, a former guerrilla commander, told reporters in Racak. Serbs massacred Albanians in the village in 1999 before NATO went to war to drive out Serb forces.
Some 120,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, just under half in the north in a slice of land that runs adjacent to Serbia and where Serbs seem intent on cutting remaining ties with Pristina.
Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica has pledged Serbia would continue to rule parts of Kosovo where “loyal citizens” looked to Belgrade for government. Belgrade has promised to keep providing jobs, schooling and infrastructure for Serb areas.
The United States and major European Union powers have recognized Kosovo, nine years after going to war to save its 90-percent Albanian majority from ethnic cleansing by Serb forces trying to crush a guerrilla insurgency.
The swift recognitions sparked days of protests in ethnic Serb areas across the Balkans, in Serbia, northern Kosovo, Montenegro and Bosnia’s autonomous Serb Republic.
NATO’s 16,000-strong peace force has stepped up security in north Kosovo, particularly the flashpoint town of Mitrovica, where Serbs and Albanians are divided by the River Ibar.
The EU, which is deploying a 2,000-strong police and justice mission to Kosovo, withdrew its small team from Mitrovica due to security concerns.
Hundreds of protesters tried to attack the United States consulate in Bosnia’s Serb Republic capital of Banja Luka, after a largely peaceful march by some 10,000 people.
Despite a heavy police presence, the protest turned violent when several hundred set off towards the U.S. consulate, throwing stones and firecrackers at the building before they were pushed away by police.
They also smashed the windows of Croat-owned shops in the centre of town. Three people were injured, including two police officers, the emergency services said. A Reuters witness on the scene said several rioters, mainly minors, were detained.
Russia is now Serbia’s main ally in its rejection of Kosovo’s secession. Russia’s likely next president Dmitry Medvedev said a deal to bring Serbia into Russia’s South Stream gas pipeline project was a show of support for Belgrade.
The gas deal was intended to show “our support, moral, material and economic, for a state which is in a very difficult position, a state which unfortunately, by the will of a number of other states, has had its territorial integrity put in doubt,” Medvedev told reporters.
Serbian Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic said it was “insane” that Belgrade was still servicing Kosovo’s foreign debt following independence. Since 1999 this debt servicing has cost Serbia some $150 million a year.
Dinkic is a liberal in a government dominated by Kostunica, who insists that Belgrade will do nothing to jeopardize its claim on Kosovo.