MITROVICA, Kosovo -- A leading Serb politician in northern Kosovo was shot and killed Tuesday morning, raising ethnic tensions in the region and halting EU-mediated talks between Kosovo and Serbia on the day they were due to resume. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday that his country should join the investigation into the killing, adding that Serbia was also prepared to carry out its own inquiry. Oliver Ivanovic, 64, was gunned down by unknown assailants as he arrived at his SDP party headquarters just after 8 am and was later pronounced dead by medical staff at Mitrovica Hospital. Mitrovica is a town of 85,000 people where tensions remain high between the majority ethnic Albanian residents who number about 72,000 and the 13,000-strong Serb community,

A former Serbian state secretary for Kosovo, Ivanovic was a key interlocutor with NATO, the United Nations and later the EU after the war and was seen as backing dialogue with Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. 'Must be brought to justice'

"Whoever is behind this attack... whether Albanian, Serb or any other criminals, they have to be punished, they have to be brought to justice," said the Serb government official in charge of Kosovo Marko Djuric in Brussels, where he was heading the delegation due to hold talks with Kosovo Albanians on Tuesday. The bridge-watchers were often involved in ethnic violence in the early post-war period, after NATO air strikes drove out Belgrade forces accused of killing and expelling Kosovo Albanian civilians in a counter-insurgency campaign. Predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 but Belgrade has rejected the move and still considers the breakaway territory as its southern province.
Oliver Ivanović, the head politician of the Kosovo Serb party Freedom, Democracy, Justice, is killed outside his office in North Mitrovica in a drive-by shooting. Aleksandar Vučić, the President of Serbia says his government treats this as an act of terrorism.