19 May – A mayor from Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian ruling party was sworn into office in the majority Serb half of the divided town of Mitrovica on Friday a month after local elections that were boycotted by local Serbs, reported Reuters.
Some 50,000 Serbs living in four north Kosovo municipalities shunned the vote in protest that their demands for more autonomy have not been met – another sign that a peace deal signed by Kosovo and Serbia in March is not working.
The election turnout was 3.47% and local Serbs said they would not work with the new mayors in the four municipalities – all from ethnic Albanian parties – because they do not represent them.
“I will work with all my team for all the citizens without any discrimination,” new Mayor Erden Atiq said after the ceremony close to the main bridge over the river that divides the mainly Serb and ethnic Albanian sides of Mitrovica.
Igor Simic, deputy head of the Serb List, the biggest Belgrade-backed Kosovo Serb party, said it had set June 1 as a deadline for Kosovo authorities to stop what he called intimidation, persecution and illegal arrests of local Serbs.
Speaking to reporters in Mitrovica, he said his party had so far managed “with almost superhuman efforts to restrain people” and prevent a flare-up of violence over Atiq’s inauguration.
Western countries, Kosovo’s main supporters, said that although the April vote was conducted legally, the results would bring no progress because of the Serb boycott.
Ethnic Albanians form a more than 90% majority in Kosovo but just a small minority in the north.
The Western-backed plan verbally agreed to by the Kosovo and Serbian governments in March aimed to defuse tensions by granting local Serbs more autonomy, with the national government in Pristina retaining ultimate authority.
Local Serbs, who still receive subsidies and benefits from Belgrade, vow not to take part in any election until the implementation of a decade-old, EU-mediated accord to set up an association of semi-autonomous Serb municipalities.
Official Pristina does not accept the creation of the Serb Association as they want it because, according to it, it will lead to the creation of the Republika Srpska like in Bosnia in northern Kosovo. /argumentum.al
