Ethnic Serb mayors take office in tense northern Kosovo

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MITROVICA, Kosovo (AP) — Ethnic Serb mayors took office Friday in majority-Serb municipalities in northern Kosovo, more than two years after a governing crisis there led to clashes with NATO-led peacekeepers.

The new mayors in four northern Kosovo municipalities were sworn in following local elections in October. All four come from the dominant Srpska Lista, or Serbian List, party which is backed by Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic.

Kosovo is a former Serbian province that declared independence in 2008 but Belgrade does not recognize the split. The dispute has been a source of tension in the volatile Balkans that went through a series of wars in the 1990s, including the Kosovo conflict in 1998-99.

Serb officials in northern Kosovo in 2023 staged a walkout and boycotted an election over a dispute with the central government in Pristina, which is dominated by Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians. Tensions soared after the government installed ethnic Albanian mayors in the Serb-run north.

More than two dozen NATO troops in Kosovo were injured in the 2023 violence that erupted when local Serbs tried to take over the municipal buildings in northern Kosovo.

While clashes have stopped, tensions in northern Kosovo have simmered since the crisis.

Milan Radojevic, the newly elected mayor of the northern, Serb-dominated part of the town of Mitrovica, said citizens “clearly expressed their will” in the October elections. Apart from Mitrovica, northern Kosovo also includes the municipalities of Zubin Potok, Leposavic and Zvecan.

“They (voters) have given us a mandate to close a dark chapter and to work in the interest of the citizens and the municipality," Radojevic added.

Serbia and ethnic Serbs in Kosovo are angry that the Kosovo government has not established an association of Serb municipalities envisaged years ago in a dialogue brokered by the European Union. The dialogue has been stalled with Kosovo facing punitive measures from the EU for its perceived lack of cooperation.

Most of Kosovo's population of 2 million people are ethnic Albanians. A brutal Serbian crackdown on separatist Kosovo rebels triggered NATO bombing in 1999 that forced Belgrade to withdraw from the territory and ended the war with the Alliance's troops deploying as peacekeepers.