Kosovo authorities on Friday closed five parallel institutions that work with the Serb minority, a move that drew immediate criticism from the United States and could further escalate tensions with neighboring Serbia.
Kosovo's Minister of Regional Administration, Elbert Krasniqi, confirmed the closure of five so-called parallel centres in the north, where most of the Serb minority lives, writing online that it was a “violation of the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Kosovo.”
The U.S. Embassy in Kosovo said in a statement on Friday that Washington reiterated its “concern and disappointment over the continued uncoordinated actions that continue to have a direct and adverse impact on members of Kosovo's Serb community and other ethnic minority communities.”
Serbia has continued to support Kosovo's Serb minority since its 2008 declaration of independence, which Belgrade does not recognise.
Kosovo was a Serbian province until a NATO bombing campaign in 1999 ended a war between Serbian government forces and Kosovo Albanian separatists that left around 13,000 people, mostly ethnic Albanians, dead.
Relations between Kosovo and Serbia remain tense, with 13 years of EU-brokered normalization talks making no progress, and a shootout between masked Serb gunmen and Kosovo police in September 2023 left four people dead.
The EU and the United States are pressuring both sides to implement the agreement reached in February and March 2023 between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who heads the ethnic Albanian-majority government.
This month, the city of Pristina announced it would open a bridge over the Ibar River, which divides Mitrovica into a Serb-majority north and an Albanian-majority south. The bridge has been closed to vehicles for more than a decade and has been barricaded by minority Serbs since 2011, claiming that “ethnic cleansing” would be carried out if ethnic Albanians were allowed to freely cross the bridge into Serb parts of the city.
Kurti is also at odds with Western countries over Kosovo's unilateral closure this year of six branches of Serb-licensed banks in northern Kosovo.
Unrest in the northern part of Mitrovica has increased since last year when the NATO-led International Peacekeeping Force in Kosovo, known as KFor, increased its personnel and equipment along the Kosovo-Serbia border, including at the bridge in Mitrovica.
Kosovo will hold parliamentary elections on February 9, which are expected to be a test for Kurti, whose ruling party won a landslide victory in 2021.
Associated Press
