Ethnic tensions flare in Kosovo in wake of Mitrovica attacks

THE EUROPEAN Union has called for calm in Kosovo amid rising ethnic tension following two attacks in the flashpoint town of Mitrovica.

The EU’s president, Herman Van Rompuy, visited Kosovo yesterday as police investigated a fatal bomb blast in Mitrovica last Friday and the shooting of a local Serb MP on Monday, incidents that Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs have blamed on one another.

“Rule of law is one of the defining values of the European Union and one of our most important priorities here in Kosovo,” Mr Van Rompuy said after visiting the headquarters of Kosovo’s EU justice and policing mission, which he praised for doing “valuable and very important work, sometimes in very difficult circumstances”.

Before arriving in Kosovo, Mr Van Rompuy called for “restraint, calmness, stability and dialogue” following the attacks in Mitrovica, the town most often blighted by violent clashes between the Albanians and Serbs living on opposite banks of the Ibar river.

Most people in the Serb stronghold of northern Mitrovica in northern Kosovo refuse to accept the declaration of independence made by the ethnic Albanian government in the capital, Pristina, in February 2008, and continue to look to Belgrade for leadership and services.

Serb leaders say they will never recognise the sovereignty of Kosovo, which was run by the UN after Nato bombing ended a Serb crackdown on separatist rebels in 1999.

A Serb doctor was killed last Friday when a grenade exploded during a protest against the opening of a Kosovo government office in northern Mitrovica and, three days later, Serb MP Petar Miletic was shot and wounded outside his apartment in the town.

Serbs blamed radical Albanians, but officials in Pristina said the attacks were part of Serb attempts to show that Kosovo was ungovernable ahead of yesterday’s discussion on the country in the UN Security Council, and a forthcoming ruling on its independence by the International Court of Justice.

They said the fatal grenade blast came amid a Serb-only demonstration, and that Mr Miletic was attacked because he belongs to a relatively moderate party that engages with the Pristina government.

“We know that Serbia has tried all the time to find small bits and pieces that would prove their theory that Kosovo cannot be a sustainable and established place, but I would say that their efforts are in vain,” said Kosovo president Fatmir Sejdiu.