Iran Press/ Europe: The main political party in Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, Serbian List, called on Friday on the Serb community not to participate.
“Except in some rare and very few cases, Serbs are boycotting the elections,” an official from the central election commission, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters.
Serbia and the Kosovo Serbs are demanding the creation of an association of Kosovo Serb municipalities, in line with a decade-old EU-brokered deal with the Kosovo government in Pristina, before they take part in the vote.
Fearing possible violence on Sunday, the central election commission abandoned plans to put voting booths in schools in mostly Serbian areas and instead set up mobile huts at 13 locations.
Election officials in Zubin Potok, a municipality inhabited mainly by Serbs, were on standby in case any voters showed up. The voting huts were guarded by Albanian police officers brought in from other regions after 500 Serb police officers, along with Serb administrative staff and judges, resigned collectively last November in protest over the Kosovo government’s plan to replace Serbian car license number plates with those of Kosovo.
The European Union and the United States said last week they were disappointed that Serbs had decided not to participate in the elections.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, following the 1998-99 war in which NATO intervened to protect the ethnic Albanian majority, but Serbia has not recognized the independence and Kosovo’s Serbs view themselves as part of Serbia and see Belgrade, not Pristina, as their capital, Reuters reported.
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