The Steering Group says that the Kosovo government is to “start preparations for an organized end to supervised independence” by the end of 2012, saying it would transform Kosovo into a “normal European state.”

But the statelet still claimed by Serbia has little international recognition, including from two permanent UN Security Council members, Russia and China. Kosovo’s NATO-mandated secession from Serbia in the midst of a NATO occupation remains controversial, particularly as a number of ethnic Serbian towns were blocked them from trading with their neighbors still inside Serbia. NATO troops continue to enforce the closed border.

The Steering Group went on to warn Serbia against allowing Kosovar Serbs, who remain Serbian citizens, to vote in the upcoming Serbian elections. They also warned Serbia to remove all police from Kosovo territory. Serbia insists it has no police in Kosovo.

At issue are the roadblocks in northern Kosovo, set up by Kosovar Serbs to protest the ethnic Albanian dominated government’s efforts (with NATO help) to crush dissent in the north and close the border to all outside trade.

After a bit of haranguing from NATO, Serbian President Boris Tadic has called on the Kosovar Serbs to remove the roadblocks and let NATO close them off from all outside trade. The Kosovar Serbs, who don’t really have any special reason to listen to the president of Serbia, haven’t reacted so far, prompting “deep concern” from NATO officials.

And even though Tadic played ball, his inability to dictate the behavior of other people of the same ethnicity as him has several in the EU, including Germany, looking to impose various punishments on Serbia, including eliminating them as a candidate for EU membership.

France opposed, but not on the grounds that there isn’t collective racial guilt, let alone on the grounds that the protest in Kosovo is mostly a reaction to harsh crackdowns by the Kosovar regime. Instead, their argument is that they want Tadic’s party to win the next election, and they’re worried that the sanctions will hurt his chances.

But whereas past attempts ended with the crowds waiting for NATO to leave then immediately setting up another roadblock, today they clashed with the NATO forces, wounding at least 21 soldiers.

The protesters threw stones at the NATO troops, and also tried to dump gravel on them using the trucks that set up the roadblocks in the first place. The only serious injury on the NATO side was when one of them was hit with a truck.

Several of the Serb protesters suffered injuries related to the use of tear gas, as well as attacks by NATO troops with batons. No figures for injuries on the protesters’ side were released, however.

Within the hour, the Serbs were back, and put up an identical roadblock on the exact same road, rendering NATO’s show of force completely pointless. The process has recurred over the past several weeks.

The roadblocks were built in the wake of NATO’s invasion of the region, a move backed by the ethnic Albanian government to prevent the Kosovar Serbs from trading with their neighbors in Serbia. The roadblocks have made it difficult for NATO to deploy troops to the border to prohibit trade.

Since the 2008 declaration of independence, the Kosovo government had mostly ignored the Serb-dominated north, except for condemning calls from the region to be allowed to secede from Kosovo, just as Kosovo itself had seceded from Serbia. Though NATO backed Kosovo’s secession, they have ruled out allowing northern Kosovo to secede from the rest of the nation.

Tear gas and pepper spray were fired against demonstrators, as well as against crowds of civilians who happened to be near the site of barricades, and locals expressed shock at the severity of NATO’s response.

“We had a great relationship with KFOR (NATO’s Kosovo Force) before this. I don’t know what happened to them,” one protester noted. The Kosovar Serbs have been protesting efforts by their government, dominated by ethnic Albanians, to close off trade with neighboring Serbia.

And while NATO reported that the barricades set up by the Serbs have been destroyed, allowing troops into the border posts to close them off, many of the demonstrators appeared to raise the prospect of setting up new ones, saying that they are willing to continue for months if necessary.

The ethnic Serbs in Northern Kosovo have been blocking the roads to military and regime forces off and on since late July, when Kosovo and NATO troops invaded the region and seized border posts to prevent trade with neighboring Serbia.

The Serbian government warned NATO against using military force to remove the roadblocks, saying that attempting to crush the unrest in the north violently would only add to the tension in the region.

The Kosovo government is dominated by ethnic Albanians, and is hostile to Serbia, from which it formally seceded in 2008 (after a nine year run under UN rule). The northern portion of the nation is ethnic Serbian, and objected to being included in the secession. They have called for secession from Kosovo, but it is opposed by NATO.

Kosovar Serbs make up only about a tenth of the nation’s population, but are the majority in the northern districts. The central government has been tried to curb all trade between the region and neighboring Serbia.

The Serbs have hoped to eventually secede from Kosovo, just as the Kosovar Albanians managed to secede from Serbia (with NATO help), and potentially rejoin Serbia instead of being an undesired underclass inside Kosovo. The Kosovar government has ruled this out, however, as have a number of NATO member nations, which insist Kosovo must remain exactly as it is currently constituted.

Even one ethnic Serbian Kosovo MP condemned his people, insisting that they needed to abandon their opposition to the current regime and warning that those who don’t will face the same ruin as Milosevic.

PM Hashim Thaci insisted that northern Kosovo, the vast majority of whose population is ethnically Serbian, has “no rule and law” and that the national government would have to take over the border crossings to enforce their ban on any and all trade.

The move comes as the Serbs returned to roadblocks near the border crossings to protest the ban on trade. Kosovo politicians blamed the Serbian government, accusing them of plotting to prevent the border closure.

The current row is part of a move since late July, when the national government attacked the border crossings, accusing local police of letting traffic through. NATO has backed the Kosovo government unquestioningly in the dispute, and has condemned calls by the nation’s Serbian minority to maintain ties with the homeland from which they never wanted to secede in the first place.

Though the Kosovo central government had banned all trade with neighboring Serbia, in practice the border crossings in the north had long remained open, allowing Kosovar Serbs to come and go as they pleased. This ended when the Kosovo government invaded the region in late July to capture the border post.

The move prompted angry protests and even some clashes with the locals, and eventually the NATO troops announced they were taking over the disputed border crossings, to ensure that no pesky trade occurs.

The Kosovar Serbs have complained that their inclusion in the NATO-enforced secession was a mistake, and that they would have preferred to remain part of Serbia. Despite this, the Kosovo government has ruled out ever allowing the northern region to secede, saying to do so would be “inhuman.“

“Proposals for partition of Kosovo or exchange of territories are unacceptable, inhuman and anti-historical,” she insisted after the talks. The Kosovar Serbs have hoped to rejoin Serbia, complaining of harsh discrimination in Albanian majority NATO-occupied Kosovo.

Many in the Serb-majority north had been operating as though they were still part of Serbia, trading and traveling freely. Attacks by the central government and the seizure of border posts by NATO put an end to that.

Now NATO is warning that tensions are on the rise again in the north, and that “extremist” sentiment among ethnic Serbs could lead to violence. At the same time, Rompuy and other EU officials praised Jahjaga for her willingness to meet over the tensions, even though she made it clear the Kosovo government will do nothing to answer the grievances causing them.