Serbs in northern Kosovo feel betrayed by historic deal

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo: Most Serbs in northern Kosovo say they feel betrayed by a historic deal reached by Belgrade and Pristina to normalize ties in a step to heal the festering enmity in the Balkans’ last trouble-spot.
“Belgrade betrayed and cheated us,” Marko Dimitrijevic, a 32-year-old pharmacist, said bitterly.
The European Union-brokered agreement, signed by Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and his Kosovo counterpart Hashim Thaci in Brussels on Friday, provides some autonomy for the roughly 40,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo who steadfastly refuse to recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia.
Details of the text — aimed at helping to resolve the last major dispute remaining of the bloody 1990s conflict that split the Balkans — have not been made public by the EU.
But an unofficial version published by local media says Kosovo Serbs would be given positions of authority in the regional police force and in courts in Serb-majority municipalities, albeit within Kosovo’s legal framework.
While the concessions — the result of several rounds of EU-mediated talks — are welcome, the historic deal has also infuriated many Kosovo Serbs who see it as a tacit acceptance by Belgrade of Kosovo’s independence.
Dimitrijevic angrily called on Dacic and his aides “to come here and tell us if they are ashamed” for having struck the deal.
By reaching the agreement “they recognized Kosovo as an independent state and are pushing us under Albanian authority,” added Gordana Petkovic, a 57-year-old clerk in Kosovska Mitrovica.
“We will not accept it. I will never take Kosovo’s documents,” she told AFP. Many of the 80,000 other Kosovo Serbs scattered in enclaves throughout other parts of Kosovo also voiced disappointment over the deal, which they said made them feel further removed from Serbia.
“Belgrade has abandoned the north of Kosovo, just as it already abandoned us when the (ethnic) Albanians declared their independence,” said Nikola Stosovic, a retiree in the enclave of Gracanica near Pristina. “We have to resign ourselves to the idea that Serbia is far away,” said Darinka Stojkovic, a nearby newspaper vendor.
Media in Pristina, which is predominantly ethnic Albanian, yesterday hailed the normalization deal as “new confirmation that Kosovo is independent, sovereign and free,” as the daily Express wrote.
But in Belgrade, some local media took a gloomier view. “Black day — Kosovo is not ours any more! Serbia’s Capitulation in Brussels!” the tabloid Nase Novine exclaimed indignantly.
Serbia lost control over its then southern province in 1999 when NATO halted a crackdown by late strongman Slobodan Milosevic on the pro-independence ethnic Albanian majority and ousted his armed forces out of the territory.