Violence Mars Election in Kosovo PARIS - The future of a landmark power-sharing agreement between Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo was called into doubt on Monday after local elections in Kosovo over the weekend were blighted by violence and intimidation by suspected Serbian hard-liners. The elections were seen as an important test of an April accord brokered by the European Union that aimed to overcome ethnic enmities in Kosovo and the region. Under the agreement, Serbia agreed to recognize the authority of Kosovo's government over the police and the courts in the ethnically divided north of the country in return for greater autonomy for Kosovo's Serbs in the north. But two hours before polls closed on Sunday in the ethnically tense city of Mitrovica, witnesses and European Union officials said that several dozen men in masks, some wielding bats, stormed three schools on the Serbian side of the city that were being used as polling stations, smashing ballot boxes, assaulting staff members, firing tear gas and eventually forcing election officials to flee. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's mission in Kosovo, which was monitoring the election, said in a statement late on Sunday that an explosive device had also been found at one of the schools. Law enforcement officials in Kosovo said on Monday that they suspected Serbian hard-liners were behind the attack, and witnesses said some of the assailants were heard speaking the Serbian language. Nikola Gaon, a spokesman for the security organization's mission in Kosovo, said on Monday that voting had been interrupted at 27 out of 33 polling stations in northern Kosovo. "The voting in these stations was suspended to protect the security of our staff and maintain the integrity of the elections," he said by telephone from Pristina, Kosovo's capital. He underlined that the voting had progressed smoothly in the rest of the country, adding that it was now up to the central electoral commission to decide how to proceed. The European Union, which has praised the Kosovo accord as a potent symbol of regional reconciliation, deplored the attack. "We condemn the violent incidents of yesterday in Mitrovica north which disrupted the otherwise orderly run electoral process in the rest of Kosovo," said Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for Catherine Ashton, the European Union's foreign policy chief, who brokered the agreement. Since Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, around 50,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo have lived parallel but largely separate lives, with a majority steadfastly refusing to recognize Kosovo's sovereignty. Serb flags hang in the north, Serbian history is taught in schools, and only a small minority of local Serbs ever set foot in Pristina, just an hour's drive away. The April accord was supposed to integrate the Serbs by, among other things, calling on the police and the courts in the north to obey Kosovo's laws, and for public sector salaries to be paid by Pristina rather than Belgrade. It is a sign of some progress made that the Serbian government in Belgrade had called on Serbs in the north to vote in the elections. But analysts said the attacks underlined the challenges Kosovo authorities faced to win the hearts and minds of Serbs in a region where memories run deep. Ahead of the vote, protesters had papered Mitrovica with signs saying, "Don't Vote" and "Don't Be a Traitor." Speaking to B92, the independent broadcaster in Belgrade, Milivoje Mihajlovic, a senior government spokesman, said that the elections had been a political failure, and that the European Union deal was in jeopardy. He told the broadcaster that the voting had been marred by irregularities, and that voters in the north had faced a "verbal lynching" and broken ballot boxes.