NATO had given minority Serbs until Tuesday to remove barricades erected in July, when Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian-dominated authorities tried to take control of the border points.
Serbs in the north reject Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia, and on Tuesday they came out in larger numbers to man roadblocks that have forced NATO to take to helicopters to supply the disputed border gates.
It was unclear whether NATO’s 6,250-strong Kosovo Force, KFOR, would try to clear the roads by force.
Serbs have called on NATO to postpone any operation until Wednesday, when community leaders will meet to discuss a possible compromise solution.
“If KFOR can’t wait until tomorrow, and if they decide to break up the barricades using teargas and rubber bullets, we will simply pull back and then tomorrow we’ll erect even more,” said hard-line Kosovo Serb community leader Milan Ivanovic.
In September, NATO used helicopters to bypass the barricades and establish a skeleton EU and Kosovo police and customs presence at the border gates.
But the roadblocks remain, in a challenge to the West’s efforts to reverse Kosovo’s de facto ethnic partition.
Serbia effectively runs northern Kosovo, but is under pressure to help resolve the impasse after the European Commission conditioned future EU accession talks on Belgrade’s cooperation on Kosovo
Previous attempts to remove the barricades have ended in violent clashes.
Serbia lost control over Kosovo in 1999 when NATO bombed for 78 days to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanian civilians by Serbian forces in a two-year counter-insurgency war.
More than 80 countries, including the United States and most of the European Union, have recognized the new country.
