(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-02-24 11:52

There, too, solidarity with Moscow was on display.

"For the first time ever, Serbia is not alone - it has Russia by its side. Sooner or later, Serbia will get Kosovo back," added Radojko Kecic, 48.

Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's chosen successor and the man expected to easily win Russia's presidential election March 2, is scheduled to visit Belgrade on Monday.

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On Friday, the State Department ordered between 80 and 100 nonessential embassy employees, their families and the families of American diplomats in Belgrade to leave Serbia.

"We are not sufficiently confident that they are safe here," US Ambassador Cameron Munter said in an interview.

The US and the EU have warned Serbia to boost protection of foreign diplomats and missions, and the U.N. Security Council has unanimously condemned the attacks on foreign missions.

EU representative Pieter Feith said Saturday he recalled his staff from Kosovo's restive north.

There have been scattered protests against Kosovo's independence in other countries as well. In Athens, Greece, about 2,000 pro-Communist demonstrators marched to the US embassy on Saturday. And in Germany, about 1,200 people demonstrated in a square in downtown Stuttgart and 500 others protested in Frankfurt.

In Belgrade, the chief Serbian state prosecutor said Saturday that authorities were searching for participants in Thursday night's riots when the US embassy was attacked. Police said have they arrested nearly 200 rioters in the worst anti-Western violence seen since the ouster of former strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

Protesters torched several offices of the US Embassy's consular section and attacked the missions of Germany, Belgium, Turkey, Croatia and other countries. One person died and more than 150 were injured in the violence.

Authorities identified the dead person as Zoran Vujovic, 21, of the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad. Serbian media said Vujovic used to live in Kosovo, but fled in the wake of the 1998 war.

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