About 10,000 Serb protesters gathered in the northern town of Mitrovica, braving the cold weather and the rain, with local leaders insisting that they would never allow Kosovo to become independent.
"A settlement to the status of Kosovo must be arrived at through compromise, international law and the borders must be respected, there must be no winners and losers," said the head of the Zvecan Town Council, Dragisa Milovic.
Milan Ivanovic, the head of the committee to ensure that Kosovo remains within Serbia, said that the Kosovo Serbs would use all democratic means available to ensure that Kosovo remained part of Serbia.
"We call for substantial decentralisation and institutional links with Belgrade," Ivanovic said.
About 1,000 protesters also gathered in the Serb enclave of Gracanica, just south of the capital Pristina, and nearly 3,000 Serbs rallied in the village of Ropotovo, about 30 kilometres southeast of Pristina, to mark the occasion.
Addressing the crowd, local Serb leaders expressed their support for Belgrade's negotiating team involved in talks in Vienna on the final status of the province, saying they would never accept to live in an independent Kosovo.
Protesters in another Serb enclave in the Morava river valley warned the international community that independence for Kosovo would pose a threat not only to the Serbs but also to the United States and Europe.
In two days of violence in 2004, ethnic Albanian extremists killed 19 Serb civilians and nearly 4,000 Serbs fled their homes within or outside the province. About 800 houses were demolished or burned down, as were also 35 Serb Orthodox churches and monasteries, including buildings dating back to the 14th century.