Hundreds mourn slain Kosovo Serb politician at funeral

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, several government ministers and opposition leaders joined a crowd of more than a thousand for the burial at Belgrade’s main cemetery Novo Groblje.

Ivanovic was shot dead from a car Tuesday morning as he arrived at his party’s headquarters in the nothern Kosovo town of Mitrovica. His killers have not yet been identified.

Ivanovic was buried in so-called Alley of Great Men, reserved for Serbian luminaries.

He lies not far from the Nobel Prize literature laureate Ivo Andric and Serbian reformist prime minister Zoran Djindjic, who was assassinated in 2003.

– ‘Tragedy’ for locals –

Hundreds of Kosovo Serbs came from Mitrovica, the ethnically divided town where Ivanovic was shot dead, to attend the funeral.

“It is a tragedy, we lost the best among us,” said one of them, Aleksandar Jaksic, 44.

Ivanovic’s killing raised fears that the already tense situation could worsen in northern Kosovo, home to a Serb minority.

It disrupted a EU-moderated bid to normalise ties between Kosovo and Serbia. Talks had been due to resume on the day when Ivanovic was killed but were postponed indefinitely.

– Kosovo tensions –

Nearly two decades since the end of the war between Serbian security forces and Kosovo Albanian guerrillas, the town remains deeply divided between an Albanian majority and Serb minority.

The war claimed 13,000 lives.

The ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, a move that Belgrade and Kosovo Serbs still refuse to recognise.

– Victim branded ‘paranoid’ –

Ivanovic, 64, was facing a retrial on war crimes charges over the 1990s conflict but was perceived as a moderate politician, favouring dialogue with Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians.

He was the only top Kosovo Serb politician who had publicly spoken out against Belgrade’s policies in Kosovo, and was regularly labelled a “traitor” by his political opponents.

He was also a voice against corruption which plagues Kosovo, notably in the Serb-populated north.

During the campaign for October’s municipal election, the mayor of northern Mitrovica Goran Rakic, who won against Ivanovic, accused him of a “paranoid conviction” that he was a “victim of threats”.

He accused Ivanovic of being “silent while Serb villages and monasteries were burning all over Kosovo in 2004” during inter-ethnic riots.

Rakic changed his tune after the killing, saying that “shots against Ivanovic (were) shots against all Kosovo Serbs.”

– Killers ‘will never be found’ –

After two days of investigations by prosecutors from both ethnic communities, there were still no public hints from officials of who was responsible for the killing.

Police official Zeljko Bojic told AFP that witnesses had been questioned and emails, phone conversations and records from social networks were examined.

“Those responsible will never be found, since in our region the authors of political murders are never discovered,” said Serbian political analyst Aleksandar Popov.

He said that whoever was responsible, Ivanovic’s death could serve the interests of politicians who want to postpone dialogue on normalising ties between Belgrade and Pristina.