Vetevendosje's Kurti Blames Serbs for Ivanovic Killing

Albin Kurti, the newly-elected leader of Vetevendosje (Self-Determination), the biggest opposition party in Kosovo, told BIRN on Thursday that he believes that Serbs were behind last week's murder of Kosovo Serb politician Oliver Ivanovic.

Ivanovic, the leader of Kosovo Serb party Freedom, Democracy, Justice, was shot  outside his office in the Serb-dominated north of the ethnically-divided town of Mitrovica.

"There might be two explanations," Kurti said in an interview with BIRN's TV show 'Jeta ne Kosove', implying that Ivanovic's murder could have been a Serb show of strength, intended to send a message to Kosovo's institutions.

"On one hand there's the explanation that Serbia wants to show - lest anyone in Kosovo thinks otherwise - that the [Serb-dominated] north of Kosovo can ever be Kosovo, and that it is a place where not only Serbia rules, but its state security structures rule, because the murder was clearly carried out in a very professional manner," he explained.

Ivanovic was seen as a political moderate in Kosovo who advocated coexistence between its Serb minority and Albanian majority, but he was also standing trial for allegedly ordering the murder of Kosovo Albanians in Mitrovica in 1999.

"Another explanation could be…because many witnesses [at the trial] who saw Oliver Ivanovic as part of different paramilitary formations," suggested Kurti.

He speculated that Ivanovic might have had information about other perpetrators of wartime crimes, and "could have been eliminated by someone" as a result.

In the interview, Kurti also spoke about the ongoing attempt by MPs from the ruling coalition to revoke the law that enabled then establishment of the Hague-based Specialist Chambers, which will try former Kosovo...