During a heated debate on measures to defuse tensions in the country’s northern Serbian enclaves, a brief scuffle broke out between Kosovo parliamentarians on Thursday, who had engaged in a war of words.
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The row erupted when Prime Minister Albin Kurti was addressing Parliament and was doused with water by a rival MP. This gesture sparked a brief and chaotic brawl, with deputies pushing each other. No injuries were reported as a result of this incident.
The Kosovan parliament is no stranger to such heated debates. During his years in opposition, Mr Kurti rose to notoriety for throwing tear gas canisters during parliamentary sessions and forcing MPs to don gas masks while toxic smoke blanketed the hemicycle.
Thursday’s row comes as Mr Kurti pledged to defuse tensions in northern Kosovo, where pressure has been mounting since his government’s decision last May to install ethnic Albanian mayors in four Serb-majority municipalities.
The decision triggered one of the worst episodes in the history of tensions in the north of the country in years, with demonstrations, the arrest by Serbia of three Kosovar police officers and a violent uprising by Serb protesters that killed more than 30 NATO peacekeepers.
Opposition parties in Kosovo have increasingly criticized Mr Kurti’s handling of the crisis, accusing the prime minister of undermining Pristina’s ties with a number of Western allies.
Mr Kurti is due to meet Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic next week in Brussels, where both sides are under heavy pressure from the European Union to ease tensions.
The conflict in the north is just the latest in a long list of incidents that have rocked the region since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, almost a decade after NATO forces helped oust Serb troops during a bloody war in the former province. An estimated 13,000 people lost their lives.
Belgrade, along with its key allies China and Russia, refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence, thus preventing it from serving in the United Nations. Kosovo is predominantly Albanian, but in the northern parts of the territory, near the border with Serbia, Serbs remain in the majority in several communities.