“Voting material from three election centres in Mitrovica was totally unusable and the central election commission decided to annul and repeat the vote there,” commission member Nenad Rikalo said. The date for the repeat vote will be announced later, he told Serbian state television RTS. Electoral committee members prepare for voting in the municipal elections at a polling station in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo, 03 November 2013. Voting was cut short Sunday in Mitrovica when masked Serb extremists attacked officials and smashed ballot boxes. Other violations, such as intimidation of voters, also marred the day.
Serb nationalists in Kosovo who would prefer closer ties to Belgrade oppose the elections, arguing that the polls would only further integrate the north with mostly Albanian Kosovo. The predominantly Albanian province split from Serbia in 2008. Serbia endorsed the Kosovo elections as part of a larger agreement that would put Serbia on a path to EU membership.
Despite agreeing to normalize ties with Kosovo, Serbia refuses to recognize it. Nationalists also strongly oppose the agreement about the elections, saying it leads to recognition.
EU top diplomat Catherine Ashton has condemned the electoral violence and summoned Serbian and Kosovo prime ministers, Ivica Dacic and Hashim Thaci, to Brussels on Wednesday to discuss it.
Source: Disrupted Kosovo vote to be repeated in some Serb areas | EUROPE ONLINE.