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Serb politician in Kosovo shot dead Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanović shot dead outside party headquarters
(34 minutes later)
Assailants opened fire on Oliver Ivanović in front of the offices of his Citizens’ Initiative party Ivanović killed on day that Belgrade and Pristina started talks on normalising ties
Associated Press in Mitrovica Agence France-Presse in Mitrovica
Tue 16 Jan 2018 09.52 GMT Tue 16 Jan 2018 10.20 GMT
First published on Tue 16 Jan 2018 09.52 GMT
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Oliver Ivanović, a leading Serb politician in northern Kosovo, has been shot dead, his lawyer had said. Oliver Ivanović, a leading Kosovo Serb politician, has been killed in a drive-by shooting as he arrived at his party headquarters on the day that Belgrade and Pristina started talks on normalising ties after a break of more than a year
“Unfortunately, I wish it weren’t true, but doctors declared Oliver dead at 9.30 this morning,” Nebojsa Vlajic said. “I am informed that he was shot dead on the spot and efforts to revive him at Mitrovica hospital were unsuccessful,” said Ivanović’s lawyer Nebojsa Vlajic.
Serbian media reported that unknown assailants opened fire on Ivanović in front of the offices of his Citizens’ Initiative party. Ivanović, who was set to face a retrial on charges of war crimes relating to the Kosovo conflict after an earlier conviction was thrown out, had been hit by five bullets, Vlajic said.
The 64-year-old was one of the key politicians in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, a former Serbian province where tensions remain high a decade after it declared independence. The 64-year-old, from the Social Democratic party, was considered a moderate politician in the ethnically divided flashpoint town of Mitrovica.
A Kosovo court convicted Ivanović of war crimes during the 1998-99 war. That verdict was overturned and a retrial had been under way. A former Serbian state secretary for Kosovo, Ivanović was a key interlocutor with Nato, the United Nations and later the European Union after the 1990s war and was seen as backing dialogue with Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians.
More details soon … Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić swiftly called an emergency meeting of the council for national security after the shooting, national broadcaster RTS reported.
In Brussels, a delegation from Belgrade walked out of the talks with Kosovo Albanians that had resumed earlier on Tuesday after more than a year’s hiatus, according to local media in Belgrade.
Under the pressure from the international community and European Union auspices, Kosovo and Serbia have been trying to normalise ties almost 20 years since the start of a bloody war that claimed 13,000 lives, mostly ethnic Albanians.
The 1998-99 war between Serbian security forces and Kosovo Albanian guerrillas was ended by a Nato air campaign.
Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008.
Belgrade still refuses to recognise the move by its former southern province.
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