Podgorica - More than 30 people were injured and 35 arrested in violent pro-Serbia protests in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica on Monday night, it was reported Tuesday.

A crowd of several thousand rallied Monday evening, on call by opposition parties, against Podgorica's recognition of Serbia's breakaway province Kosovo.

At the rally, opposition politicians issued their demand for Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic's cabinet to revoke Kosovo's recognition by Wednesday and schedule a referendum on whether to acknowledged it.

Toward the end of the protest some demonstrators started throwing stones and flares at police guarding the parliament building, triggering violence.

Police responded with teargas and dispersed the crowd within 20 minutes, but clashes in side streets continued over the next hour, Vijesti said. Belgrade media on Tuesday claimed rubber bullets were also fired.

The leader of the opposition Serbian List, Andrija Mandic, accused th authorities of provoking the incident.

Police however issued a late-night statement saying it was working to identify "several small groups of aggressive persons" responsible for the attack on police guarding administrative buildings.

Djukanovic's cabinet on Thursday recognized Kosovo, eight months after the Albanian-dominated province declared independence from Serbia.

Belgrade immediately expelled the Montenegrin ambassador and threatened other measures against the former sister-republic.

Though Montenegro was the last of former Yugoslav republics to split from a federation with Serbia, in 2006, their relations remained uneasy at best and were further aggravated last week.

Montenegro and its Serbian neighbour, Macedonia, brought the number of countries that recognized Kosovo to 50, among them the United States, 22 of the 27 EU nations and Japan.