Home » France and Germany want new elections in Kosovo municipalities | Current Europe | DW

France and Germany want new elections in Kosovo municipalities | Current Europe | DW

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France and Germany want new elections in Kosovo municipalities |  Current Europe |  DW

At a summit in Moldova, French President Emmanuel Macron said he and Chancellor Olaf Scholz had become the presidents of the Kosovo andof Serbia called on the mayors of four municipalities in northern Kosovo to be re-elected “as soon as possible” with Serb participation. Both had urged Kosovo to undertake to create an association of Serb communities in order to give the Serb majority of the population in northern Kosovo more self-government. Macron added that he and the chancellor had urged both sides to come back with “clear answers” next week.

Scholz emphasized that it was now important “that everyone involved do everything to ensure that there is a de-escalation”. The priority is that local citizens “can take part in the elections”. The goal is to get out of “this spiral,” declared the chancellor after the four-way meeting on the sidelines of the European Political Community (EPG) summit in Moldova. On the chances of success mediation efforts Scholz did not want to comment. He only pointed out that the agreements already negotiated would have to be implemented for a lasting solution to the conflict. “We talked about it very intensively and seriously,” he said. It is “a very serious matter”.

No response from Vucic

Regarding the demands of Germany and France, Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani said she was “ready” to “consider” this possibility. She informed her interlocutors that Kosovar law allows for redialing. A fifth of the voters in a district must initiate a corresponding procedure for this. But “participation on their part” is necessary for this. Her Serbian colleague Aleksandar Vucic was asked “not to interfere, not to put pressure on the citizens”. But there was “no answer from his side,” said Osmani. However, she hopes that the citizens “can make use of their rights, which are guaranteed by the constitution in Kosovo”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the governments of Kosovo and Serbia to take “immediate steps to de-escalate tensions”. On the fringes of an informal meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo, Norway, he pointed out that the conflict was endangering the efforts of both countries to move closer to the EU. Both Serbia and Kosovo want to join the EU.

Dispute over four mayoral posts

In the north of Kosovo there had been violent clashes in the past few days. The Kosovan government installed ethnic Albanian mayors in Serb-majority communities under police protection. Serbian residents of the region protested violently; however, the Serbs had previously largely boycotted the local elections, in which Albanian local politicians were then elected.

Kosovo, a country of 1.8 million people with a majority ethnic Albanian population, declared its independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade still regards it as a Serbian province to this day. Around 120,000 Serbs live in Kosovo, mostly in the north of the country. Other countries, including Serbia’s allies China and Russia, also do not recognize Kosovo’s independence.

New protests in Zvecan and Mitrovica

Meanwhile, the protests in Kosovo continued. Dozens of ethnic Serbs – significantly fewer than before – gathered on Thursday in front of the town hall in the northern Kosovar town of Zvecan, which soldiers from the international security force KFOR cordoned off and surrounded with barbed wire. There were earlier in the week 30 Italian and Hungarian KFOR soldiers injured in clashes with protesters been. More than 50 Serbs were also injured.

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In the Serb-majority north of the divided city of Mitrovica, two ethnic Albanians were attacked and injured by a group of masked “criminals,” the Kosovar police said. In the south of the city, where ethnic Albanians live for the most part, several hundred Kosovar Albanians who wanted to move to the Serbian part of the city demonstrated briefly. However, the police blocked their way.

kle/mak (afp, dpa, ape, rtre)

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