13 Aug 14

In the wake of reported attacks on Serbian returnees, Atifete Jahjaga toured the Serbian stronghold of Gracanica on Tuesday, hailing what she called a ‘success story’ in terms of integration.

Pristina Kosovo’s President toured the ethnic Serbian town of Gracanica in central Kosovo on Tuesday, on what looked like a mission to reassure ethnic Serbs in the wake of reported attacks.

Atifete Jahjaga’s visit came after the country’s ethnic Serbian Minister for Communities and Returns, Dalibor Jevtic, on Monday complained that two families of Serbian returnees had been attacked over the weekend.

Jahjaga, accompanied on the visit by the US ambassador, Tracey Ann Jacobson, met Gracanica Mayor Branimir Stojanovic and toured some of the new facilities that were built in recent years.

Kosovo’s institutions were doing their best “to support the projects and initiatives of the municipality, which will further improve the life of the citizens living here”, she said.

“We discussed concrete projects, one of them being the health centre that is being constructed, which needs the help from Kosovo institutions,” the President noted.

“[Gracanica] is a success story because it managed to integrate all its citizens in the institutional and social life. It serves as a good example because it has managed to offer help to its citizens living here,” she added.

Asked whether she would follow up the trip to Gracanica with a visit to one of the Serbian-populated municipalities in the north Kosovo, Jahjaga said such visits “will continue in the future in the whole territory of Kosovo”.

Previously part of capital, Pristina, Gracanica was established as a separate municipality in 2008. Today it has a population of around 25,000 citizens, about 85 per cent of whom are Serbs, and is run by the Belgrade-backed Serbian List, which swept the board among Serbs in the local elections of 2013.

Gracanica Mayor Stojanovic thanked President Jahjaga for the visit and said that people “would like to see her coming here more often.

“Policies that promote tolerance and talks are very welcome. Serbs in Kosovo try to be a bridge that unites, and not a bridge that divides,” he added.

The President, who has tried hard to be a reconciling figure in the ethnically divided country, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, also met locals in Gracanica.

When one of them insisted on greeting her in Albanian, she repaid the compliment by replying to him in Serbian.