Northern Mitrovica Mayor Goran Rakic denied the allegations about ethnic cleansing in this part of the city, and underscored that ethnic cleansing has been completed a long time ago in southern Mitrovica, where not a single Serb now lives.

Northern Mitrovica is the only truly multi-ethnic environment in Kosovo, Rakic said to Radio Kontakt Plus and called on Southern Mitrovica Mayor Agim Bahtiri to refrain from making flammable statements that can destabilise the situation in the area.

Bahtiri stated earlier that Serbia has not interrupted the ethnic cleansing of northern Mitrovica and that the Serbian government allocates substantial funds for purchase of Albanian property in northern Mitrovica.

In response to the statement, Rakic noted that northern Mitrovica was home to Serbs and ethnic Albanians, Gorani, Montenegrins and Roma, while not a single Serb currently lives in the ethnic Albanian part of the city.

He noted that all tombstones have been preserved in the ethnic Albanian cemetery in northern Mitrovica, while over 70 per cent of tombstones in the Orthodox cemetery in southern Mitrovica have been destroyed, which clearly points to the differences in the attitude.

Rakic said that some ethnic Albanians were selling their property and trying to leave Kosovo because of the bad economic situation and not because of ethnic cleansing, and underscored that the government of Kosovo was responsible for this, not the Serbian government.

He called on Bahtiri to refrain from destabilising the situation in Mitrovica through flammable rhetoric that has nothing to do with the truth and instead work together on the search for a solution to economic problems.