(4 MAy 2006) Mitrovica Faces Formal Division (Balkan Insight)
Two separate administrations may be only solution for town split ethnically down the middle.
By Igor Milic in Mitrovica and Krenar Gashi in Pristina (Balkan Insight, 4 May 06)
Albanians and Serbs in Kosovo are moving towards creating a new municipality for Serbs in Mitrovica as the only possible solution for the bitterly divided town.
The administrative division of the town may be announced at the fourth round of talks on Kosovo's final status, to be held in Vienna on May 4 and 5, which will be dedicated to the question of local government, decentralization and Mitrovica in particular. Final status talks began in late January.
As in three previous rounds, the deputy UN envoy, Albert Rohan, will preside over the talks in Vienna's Auersperg palace.
The future of Mitrovica, the largest town in northern Kosovo, has threatened to dog the status talks from the start, owing to the strong opposition to independence for Kosovo voiced by a large Serbian community that has entrenched itself on the north side of the town, on the north bank of the river Ibar.
Since Serb authorities pulled out of Kosovo in mid-1999 and handed power to a UN administration, Mitrovica has been the scene of several inter-ethnic incidents, most of which have started on the main bridge over the Ibar.
The worst incident occurred on March 17, 2004, that was followed by violent protests all around Kosovo, leaving 19 people - 11 Albanians and 8 Serbs - dead and about 800 injured. Thousands of Serbs lost their homes in arson attacks.
Mitrovica is more stable nowadays, but freedom of movement for both communities to the other side of town remains limited, although, according to European Stability Initiative, about 2,100 Albanians still live in the Serb-run north.
While Serbs want a totally independent municipality in northern Kosovo, Bajram Rexhepi, Kosovo's former prime minister, and member of the Kosovar negotiating team, proposes separate but parallel units of local government in the town, which would belong at the same time to a larger, joint
municipality.
Rexhepi has conceded that everyone needs to acknowledge the peculiar position of the Kosovo Serbs who "do not have an administrative centre where they can have public services such as hospitals and a university".
But his plan does not go nearly far enough for Serbian leaders who fear any moves towards a united town council will undermine the Serb position in the north.
Oliver Ivanovic, head of the Serbian List for Kosovo and Metohija, said north Mitrovica meets all requirements needed for an independent municipality, as it comprises a compact territory and possesses enough residents and economic resources.
"Northern Mitrovica must be a separate entity and the thin line connecting the two municipalities should be overseen by an international administrator elected by both sides for a period of four years," Ivanovic told Balkan Insight.
Nebojsa Jovic, president of the Serbian National Council, SNC, meanwhile, dismissed Rexhepi's proposition for a two-in-one town council as "a play on words".
Jovic echoed Ivanovic in saying he believed northern Mitrovica should be organised as a separate municipality "or merged with the municipality of Zvecan", a nearby northern Kosovo town, mostly inhabited by Serbs.
But Rexhepi finds such a merger unacceptable, "It makes no sense for Mitrovica to unite with Zvecan as this goes against the principle of decentralising power, it is absurd as....the entire northern part of Kosovo would be in one municipality."
Petar Miletic, of the Independent Liberal Party, another Serbian party, also backed an independent northern Mitrovica, which he said - in company with other Serbian municipalities in the north - should have its own courts.
Vladan Vlaskovic, of the Youth Initiative, a non-governmental organisation from Mitrovica, said the plan for a separate municipality was "not a perfect solution, but the only one and the safest one".
Not surprisingly, most ordinary residents in the north of Kosovo divide along ethnic lines over the question of a separate town council for northern Mitrovica.
Sandra Znidarsic, a Serb resident of Zvecan, said a united municipality could not work. "For northern Mitrovica it is undoubtedly better and safer to be independent from the southern part," she said, as it would then have an independent budget and its own hospitals and higher educational
facilities.
Predrag Guberinic, who like many current residents of northern Mitrovica lived in Pristina before 1999, agreed. It would be better for both communities to live in separate municipalities, as there were still so many unresolved issues.
"We shall live side by side but on our own sides," said Guberinic.
On the other hand, Sokol Ferizi, a young Albanian from Pristina who grew up in the old, ethnically mixed Mitrovica that vanished in 1999, said Rexhepi's proposition for two administrations inside a single municipality was not the
most acceptable solution.
"Setting up two municipalities within one city will mean legalising division," Ferizi told Balkan Insight.
Another Albanian from Mitrovica who did not want to be named said the future of the town depended on the success or failure of the government's overall decentralisation plans.
"Many western cities consist of many municipalities, and this doesn't harm them in any way," he said.
Ilir Dugolli, a political analyst from Pristina, said the problem with most previous plans for Mitrovica was that each excluded the viewpoint of one or the other community entirely.
Rexhepi's plan, he added, at least ensured that each community would run its own affairs "without fear of subjugation by the other community".
"In the meantime, confidence-building measures, coordinated by the international administrator, could remove such fears and return Mitrovica to normality."
That might be a long shot, however, in a town that has long been one of the Balkans' more neuralgic ethnic flashpoints.
Igor Milic and Krenar Gashi are Balkan Insight contributors. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.
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