Serbia’s
president has accused the authorities in Pristina of wanting to start a
war, while his Kosovo counterpart has said Serbia could use the model
of Russia in Crimea to annex the northern part of Kosovo.
Tensions rose further this week when the
Kosovo authorities said they would remove a wall in the ethnically
divided town of Mitrovica built by Serbs there.
“Not
more rhetoric but we need dialog, we need to reduce tensions to avoid
incidents … and move forward normalizing the process between Pristina
and Belgrade,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters
after meeting Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa.
The
integration of the Western Balkan countries into the EU and NATO is
seen by the two institutions as a way to guarantee peace in a region
still scarred by the wars that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia in
the early 1990s.
Kosovo, backed by the
U.S. and major western European states, declared independence from
Serbia in 2008. Belgrade considers it part of its territory and supports
the Serb minority there.
NATO still has around 4,500 troops stationed in Kosovo to keep the fragile peace.
Kosovo
Albanians make up more than 90 per cent of Kosovo’s 1.8 million
population. Northern Kosovo is home to a Serb minority of around 40,000
to 50,000 people who do not consider Pristina their capital.
Normalizing
relations between Kosovo and Serbia is a key condition for both
countries to progress in their bids to join the European Union.
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