next a spike in hostilities between the Balkan neighbors, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is scheduled to visit Kosovo and Serbia the next week, the military alliance announced on Friday.
One of the biggest escalations in the former Serbian breakaway province, which is populated primarily by ethnic Albanians, was started in September by an armed ambush in Kosovo’s unstable north, close to the Serbian border. The ambush murdered a police officer.
On Monday, Stoltenberg will travel to Kosovo to meet with the president and prime minister before paying a visit to the Western military alliance forces stationed there.
The next day he will be in Belgrade for a meeting with the Serbian president, NATO said.
Animosity between Kosovo and Serbia has persisted since a war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s that drew NATO intervention against Belgrade.
Kosovo, which counts 120,000 Serbs among its 1.8 million people, declared independence from Serbia in 2008, in a move Belgrade has never recognized.
Existing tensions have flared in Kosovo’s north for months.
Protests erupted among Kosovo’s ethnic Serbs in April after the authorities installed Pristina-allied mayors after widely boycotted local elections in four Serb northern municipalities.
NATO said 93 troops from its KFOR mission were injured, some seriously, in “unprovoked attacks” during the protests. The alliance deployed more personnel to Kosovo in response.
Western nations, such as the US and the EU, have been putting pressure on Serbia and Kosovo to further ongoing efforts to strengthen relations.
During protracted negotiations in Brussels last month, EU leaders were unable to persuade the two sides to achieve a deal.
In addition, Stoltenberg will travel to NATO member North Macedonia on Tuesday and Bosnia on Sunday while in the Balkans.
