Kosovo’s prime minister today unveiled a plan to ease tensions in the region’s Serb-majority north, which includes new local elections and cuts to special police, following pressure from key Western supporters of the region’s independence from Serbia.

But the arrest on the same day of a Serb, identified by the Kosovar interior minister as the mastermind behind attacks on NATO peacekeepers during clashes with Serbs last month, sparked a fresh wave of anger in the fragile region. About 200 Serbs gathered in North Mitrovica to protest the arrest, with Kosovo police with anti-demonstration squad standing a few hundred meters away. American KFOR soldiers are also nearby.

During the operation to arrest Milun Milenkovic, three ethnic Albanian policemen of Kosovo were slightly injured, Interior Minister Jellal Svetslia said on his Facebook page.

Some 30 peacekeepers and 52 Serbs were injured in clashes late last month when ethnic Albanian mayors took office following local elections where turnout reached just 3.5 percent as Serbs, who make up the majority of the population in this region, they boycotted the elections. The United States and the European Union have called on Prime Minister Albin Kurti to withdraw the mayors, remove the special police deployed to install them and honor a 2013 agreement to form a union of autonomous Serbian municipalities in the region.

Kurti said that “(Serb) violent groups have withdrawn from Kosovo territory (and therefore) the presence of Kosovo police in three municipal buildings will be reduced”. “The government of the Republic of Kosovo will coordinate with all actors and announces early elections in four municipalities in the north,” Kurti told a news conference after meeting the ambassadors of the United States, Italy, France, Germany and Britain .

He said he presented his plan to EU and US envoys and called for a follow-up meeting between Serbian and Kosovo officials in Brussels, the EU’s headquarters.

Kurti said nothing about establishing a union of Serb municipalities that would ensure greater autonomy for the Serb-majority region. He appears reluctant to implement the deal, citing fears it could prompt the region to seek reintegration into Serbia.

Kosovo declared its internationally recognized independence from Serbia in 2008, nearly a decade after the region’s 90% ethnic Albanians revolted against oppressive Serbian rule. NATO bombing drove out Serbian security forces, but Belgrade still considers Kosovo its southern province.