Milan Ivanović (Serbian Cyrillic: Милан Ивановић; born 5 February 1955) is a Kosovo Serb medical doctor, administrator, and politician.
Ivanović was for many years the leader of the Serbian National Council of Northern Kosovo and Metohija and has been a vocal opponent of engagement with the post-1999 governing authorities in Priština.
[9] In November 1999, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) suspended him as deputy director of the hospital centre for thirty days after he refused to permit the reintegration of Albanian staff members who had walked off the job a month earlier.
[11][12][13] Ivanović was named to the executive committee of the Serbian National Council of Kosovo and Metohija on its founding in November 1999, with responsibility for health.
"[19] In August 2000, he said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)'s takeover of Trepča Mines, which was afterward shut down by UNMIK on environmental grounds, was part of a strategy to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of Serbs and establish a Greater Albania.
[27] Notwithstanding his opposition, the Serbian government supported participation and a large number of northern Kosovo Serbs took part in the vote.
[30] In April 2002, Ivanović welcomed Serbian deputy prime minister Nebojša Čović's proposal for separate entities in Kosovo (similar to those in Bosnia and Herzegovina) as "the essence of what Serbs need in order to survive in this area.
[34] Several leading SNV members charged that the arrest attempt was politically motivated, a position echoed by Yugoslavian president Vojislav Koštunica.
[40] The case against Ivanović was restarted in April 2003 when an international prosecutor indicted him for "participating as a leader of a group that committed a crime" and for "attacking official persons performing duties of security.
The SNV contested these elections as a political party, and Ivanović led its electoral list in Zvečan, where it won a narrow plurality victory with six out of seventeen mandates.
At a rally to protest the murder of seventeen-year-old Dimitrije Popović, Ivanović was quoted as saying, "Kosovo is becoming a concentration camp for Serb children and at the same time the chief prosecutor of the Hague tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, has not indicted a single criminal responsible for the suffering of Serb children, thus opening the door wide for them to act with impunity.
[53] The following year, he welcomed the approval of Serbia's new constitution, which recognized Kosovo and Metohija as an integral part of the country with significant autonomy.
[57] Ivanović urged Kosovo Serb voters to support SRS candidate Tomislav Nikolić in the run-off of the 2008 Serbian presidential election.
Shortly after the election, Tadić signed a stabilization and association agreement with the European Union, which Ivanović described as a "classic betrayal of Kosovo and Metohija.
"[60] The 2008 Serbian parliamentary election did not produce a clear winner; after the vote, Ivanović said that a new government should be formed by the "national forces" of the DSS, SRS, SPS, and New Serbia (NS).
[61] Discussions for a government composed of these parties were ultimately unsuccessful, and the SPS instead formed a coalition with For a European Serbia alliance led by the DS.
[66] By July 2009, Serbia's DS-led government had removed both Ivanović and Jakšić from management positions at Kosovska Mitrovica's hospital centre.
Ivanović became a leader of the protests, saying in October 2011 that Serbs would continue to patrol the roadblocks despite the cold weather to prevent their removal by NATO forces.
[72] Ivanović later served as a representative for Zvečan in the (again largely ceremonial) Provisional Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija, which was established in July 2013.
[75] In January 2018, he advised the media that doctors in the hospital had tried without success to save the life of Oliver Ivanović after the latter was shot by unknown assailants.
[82] Reports circulated in 2009 that EULEX was planning to indict Ivanović for a number of serious crimes, and in 2011 it was alleged that a confidential NATO bulletin described him as "a xenophobic person who controls all fuel routes in northern Kosovo, medicine and construction material smuggling."