Serbs fear they will be left behind

MITROVICA, Kosovo — Branimir Cvetnic likes to remember his hometown of Mitrovica as the lively, multicultural industrial hub it once was, rather than the grim symbol of Kosovo’s ethnic division it has become.

“Back then, Mitrovica was an open city, a city for everybody. And, now … it’s not even possible to compare,” said Cvetnic, 57, whose family has lived here for almost a century. “We used to live together, but can we do it again? I don’t know.”

Mitrovica, a former mining center in northern Kosovo, was sharply split into Serb and Albanian parts at the end of the Kosovo war in 1999. Officials from Serbia and Kosovo meet in Brussels on Tuesday in hopes of reaching an agreement that could pave the way for reuniting the city — an agreement that the town’s Serbs fear could see their demands sacrificed by a Serbia desperate to join the European Union.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but until now the Serbian government has refused to accept the split. The Serbs of northern Kosovo have rejected any authority of the ethnic Albanian government in Pristina. They have created parallel institutions, including hospitals and schools, all financed and supported from the Serbian capital, Belgrade.

But Serbia’s bid for membership in the European Union has been conditioned on normalizing relations with its former province and abolishing the parallel structures.

Impoverished by years of wars and international sanctions during the 1990s, Serbia is desperately seeking to move closer to EU membership. If a deal is reached on Tuesday, Serbia will likely be granted a date to open talks with the 27-nation bloc.

“It will be hard economically if we don’t open talks with the EU,” Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic told reporters on Monday.

In a sign that agreement may be near, Serbia’s influential deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said over the weekend that the country “can no longer afford a frozen conflict.”

Kosovo Serbs now fear the Serbian government will abandon them to save the EU deal. In Mitrovica, they warn that reuniting the town against their will could lead to a Serb exodus or to unrest. The ethnic division is clear in every corner of Mitrovica, whose population is unknown since the divided groups have never carried out a reliable census.