(BELGRADE) - Serbian police banned students from gathering Thursday for a peaceful show of goodwill to the European Union, after attacks against Western embassies over Kosovo's independence declaration.

Police stopped university students from grouping in front of the Belgrade embassy of Slovenia, the current EU president, said an AFP correspondent at the scene.

But they allowed student leader Simon Simonovic to approach the compound and hand Slovenian ambassador Miroslav Luci a pane of glass to replace a window broken in violent anti-Kosovo independence protests last week.

"We wanted to give this gift to the Slovenian ambassador to show that this is not the real face of Serbia," Simonovic said after symbolically fixing the window to a glass door together with Luci.

The comment was in reference to a series of attacks on mainly Western embassies -- including Slovenia's -- following Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia on February 17.

As well as the United States, the vast majority of EU member states including Britain, France and Germany have either recognised an independent Kosovo or indicated they will soon do so.

In the worst incident, one person was killed when hundreds of masked youths broke away from a peaceful "Kosovo is Serbia" protest to set fire to the US embassy and attack other diplomatic missions on February 21.

The Kostunica government and many Serbs consider Kosovo their country's spiritual heartland.

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