Kosovo is open to repeating the elections in four northern Serb-majority municipalities after the riots, before “other measures” need to be taken, Kosovo’s Foreign Minister Donika Gervalla-Schwarz declared on Tuesday during a visit to Prague .
Unrest in Kosovo broke out last week, with protests over the inauguration of mayors chosen in the latest municipal elections. The elections, held on April 23, were boycotted by the Kosovar Serb population, who neither appeared on the electoral lists nor attended the polls to vote. For this reason, the Serbs do not recognize the legitimacy of the councilors and have been demonstrating since Monday the 29th, the day they took office, in front of the official buildings.
Four days after the violence broke out, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and several EU representatives pressured Kosovo to call elections again. Also the United States, the main ally of the former Serbian province, punished Pristina by excluding its army from a program of military exercises.
However, it does not seem that the call for elections will come immediately. The majority Serb party in Kosovo, the Srpska Lista, warned yesterday that it would again boycott the elections, if they were called, if two requirements were not met: the withdrawal of the Kosovo Special Police Units, and the establishment of the Association of Municipalities with a Serb Majority. Some concessions that, at this point, seem impossible for the government of Albin Kurti to accept, which won the elections with promises to end the “servility” of previous governments towards the Serbs.
This association of municipalities that Belgrade and its partners in Kosovo claim would allow Serbia to manage economic, educational and health issues of the Kosovar Serb population. Pristina, for its part, with still very limited international recognition and without a presence in international organizations, fears that this body will undermine its autonomy, or even be a step prior to the Serbian annexation of some municipalities.
NATO, which remains concerned about preventing the escalation of violence in Kosovo, announced last week the dispatch of some 700 additional troops to the north of the country. These soldiers arrived on Monday to reinforce the NATO-led Multinational Force operation. Some 500 Turkish soldiers make up the bulk of the reinforcements and will be “deployed in Kosovo for as long as necessary,” NATO said.
An additional multinational battalion of reserve forces has also been placed on standby, ready to reinforce the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping mission “if necessary.”
