Persistent ethnic tensions in northern Kosovo could spark a repeat of the violence seen in the area last year, when four people were killed in a firefight and NATO peacekeepers were wounded in clashes, Admiral Stuart B. Munsch, commander of the Allied Command in Naples, said, as quoted by Reuters
Kosovo is populated mostly by ethnic Albanians, but some 50,000 Serbs in the north reject the government in Pristina and see Belgrade as their capital. A former Serbian province, Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a decade after a guerrilla uprising.
Admiral Munsch, commander of the Combined Allied Command in Naples - which oversees NATO peacekeeping in Kosovo - said the alliance remained concerned about the risk of renewed violence in the volatile north.
"Heated political rhetoric may inspire some non-governmental forces to commit violence, like what happened last year," Munsch told reporters in Pristina.
"I wouldn't say that conflict is definitely coming, I think there is a constant risk," he said, referring to the lack of progress in EU-brokered talks between the governments of Kosovo and Serbia.
A police officer and three gunmen were killed in September 2023 when a group of heavily armed assailants entered from Serbia and attacked police in the village of Banska.
Four months earlier, more than 90 soldiers were injured when Serbian protesters attacked NATO peacekeepers.
Kosovo accused Serbia of being behind the attack in Banska, but Belgrade rejected the accusations.
The United States and the European Union, Kosovo's leading global allies, have criticized the government in Pristina for taking unilateral action in the north that could spark ethnic violence and endanger the lives of some 4,000 NATO troops stationed there.
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Kosovo rejects such criticism and the issue has strained Pristina's ties with its Western backers.
As part of the EU-brokered dialogue, Kosovo and Serbia have been negotiating for more than a decade to normalize relations, but little progress has been made.
Like the Serbs living in northern Kosovo, Belgrade also considers Kosovo a part of Serbia and refuses to recognize it as a state.