Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic on December 13 ruled out the extradition to Kosovo of Milan Radoicic, a Kosovar Serb politician who has claimed he is the sole mastermind of an armed attack on a monastery in Kosovo in September that left several people dead.
Dacic said it was "impossible" to extradite Radoicic, for whom Interpol has issued an arrest warrant after he claimed that he was the sole organizer of the September 24 raid and did not share his plan with anyone else.
"All court processes will be conducted before domestic courts," Dacic said in a statement to the Beta news agency.
Four people -- a Kosovar police sergeant and three attackers -- were killed in the attack at a 14th-century Orthodox monastery in northern Kosovo when some 30 gunmen stormed the monastery, sparking a gun battle with Kosovar police.
The incident prompted international concern over the stability of Kosovo, a former province of Serbia with a predominantly ethnic Albanian population that declared independence in 2008.
Radoicic, the former vice president of the Belgrade-backed Serbian List, the largest ethnic Serb party in Kosovo, was briefly detained by Serbia after the attack and later released pending further proceedings.
Kosovo has accused Serbia of being behind the attack, an accusation that Belgrade has denied.
The Interpol arrest warrant was issued at the request of Kosovo's Interior Ministry through the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Kosovar government minister Nenad Rasic told RFE/RL on December 7.
Just days after the September attack in Banjska, amid rising tensions between Kosovo and Serbia, NATO announced an increase in its Kosovo Force (KFOR) peacekeeping mission.
KFOR, which normally has a troop strength of 4,500, was beefed up by an additional 200 troops from Britain and more than 100 from Romania.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg last month said the perpetrators of the Banjska attack must be brought to justice.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said Serbia welcomes KFOR's stepped-up presence in Kosovo, claiming that only ethnic Serbs there have been attacked since 2001.