NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has issued a statement calling on "all leaders and communities to show restraint" during voting on May 6 in the Serbian elections by ethnic Serbs living in Kosovo.
Rasmussen's statement also says he's confident NATO's peacekeeping forces in Kosovo will do everything necessary to preserve a "safe and secure" environment and prevent tensions from escalating during the May 6 vote.
Under an arrangement overseen by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, some 110,000 ethnic Serbs in Serbian-dominated northern Kosovo are eligible to cast ballots in the vote for parliament and president of neighboring Serbia.
The leadership of Kosovo, which has a large ethnic Albanian majority, declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Serbia's government rejects this and says the territory is still part of Serbia.