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Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanović shot dead outside party headquarters Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanović shot dead outside party headquarters
(35 minutes later)
Ivanović killed on day that Belgrade and Pristina started talks on normalising tiesIvanović killed on day that Belgrade and Pristina started talks on normalising ties
Agence France-Presse in Mitrovica Andrew MacDowall in Belgrade
Tue 16 Jan 2018 10.20 GMTTue 16 Jan 2018 10.20 GMT
First published on Tue 16 Jan 2018 09.52 GMTFirst published on Tue 16 Jan 2018 09.52 GMT
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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 Oliver Ivanović, a prominent and popular Kosovo Serb politician, has been gunned down outside his party headquarters on the day that Belgrade and Pristina started talks on normalising ties after a break of more than a year.
“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. Ivanović was shot six times by unknown assailants in a drive-by shooting in the divided city of Mitrovica. The former secretary of state for Kosovo and Metohija in the Serbian government was an opponent of the current Belgrade-backed Serb party in Kosovo.
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. His death may further complicate the troubled relationship between Kosovo and Serbia, which continues to regard the region as a breakaway province. It also raises questions over international peacekeeping and rule-of-law missions in the region, which critics say turns a blind eye to organised crime.
The 64-year-old, from the Social Democratic party, was considered a moderate politician in the ethnically divided flashpoint town of Mitrovica. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, and is recognised as an independent country by more than 100 countries, including the US, UK, and Germany. In 2013, the EU launched a new round of dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, with Serbia offered candidacy for EU membership. Ethnic Serbs are a small but significant minority, while 90% of the population are ethnic Albanians.
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. Russia and Serbia, as well as several EU member states, do not recognise Kosovo’s independence, and Kosovo is not a member of the United Nations. Serb-dominated northern Kosovo remains under significant influence from Belgrade, and international diplomats are reportedly floating the idea of partition. Tensions over Kosovo were already mounting as the Pristina government moved to scrap a war crimes court that would try alleged offences committed by ethnic Albanians, possibly including members of the political elite.
Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić swiftly called an emergency meeting of the council for national security after the shooting, national broadcaster RTS reported. In 2016, Ivanović was himself convicted of war crimes by a panel of international judges presiding over a Kosovo court. He was found guilty of ordering crimes against the civilian population in 1999 during the Kosovo war, which was brought to an end after an extensive Nato bombing campaign.
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. But in February last year, the conviction was overturned and the case sent back for retrial. Violence has flared up in Kosovo several times since the end of the war, and Ivanović’s arrest in 2014 led to protests by ethnic Serbs in Kosovo, and strong objections from Belgrade. Ivanović pleaded not guilty, saying the prosecution was politically motivated.
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. Ivanović had warned about the security environment in Kosovo, requesting a more active stance by the EU’s rule of law mission in Kosovo, Eulex, and Kfor, the Nato-led peacekeeping force. One of Ivanović’s vehicles was burned outside his home in July in the run-up to local elections.
The 1998-99 war between Serbian security forces and Kosovo Albanian guerrillas was ended by a Nato air campaign. “Ivanović was a pragmatic moderate, eager to reach out to find a compromise that would improve the lives of all people in Mitrovica, north and [Albanian-dominated] south,” said a western diplomat, who asked not to be named. “But he was stained by the war crimes indictment. More needs to be done to tackle organised criminal structures in the north of Kosovo, including by Belgrade.”
Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008. Negotiations between officials representing Belgrade and Pristina in Brussels were due to restart on Tuesday, but the Serbian delegation withdrew after news of the murder. President Aleksandar Vučić convened a meeting of the council of national security at noon and is due to make a statement. A Belgrade government source told the Guardian that the delegation was also withdrawn due to recent sabre-rattling by Kosovo’s parliamentary speaker, Kadri Veseli.
Belgrade still refuses to recognise the move by its former southern province. “Whatever happens, it is likely that the murder will be used for political purposes,” said James Ker-Lindsay, a specialist in south-eastern Europe at St Mary’s University in London. “I suspect this will also be used by some to try to deflect attention away from the growing political tensions over the new Kosovo criminal court.”
A local official in north Mitrovica, who asked not to be named, said: “Every institution dealing with security issues should now behave, and find the person who did this. It’s a clear sign that the situation is quite fragile, which is something I’ve been saying for some time. There is positive progress, but when it comes to the rule of law, it’s very sensitive. It’s easy to make bombastic statements, but we can’t afford more tensions.”
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