Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić said on Monday he would not go to a Council of Europe event marking 20 years of Serbia’s membership if the international human rights organisation starts a procedure to accept Kosovo as its newest member.
Speaking in Belgrade, Dačić said there have been announcements that the Council of Europe’s (CoE) decision-making committee of ministers may start a procedure on 19 April for the admission of Serbia’s former province, whose independence Belgrade does not recognise.
“What kind of a message is that? It’s humiliation and a message to Kosovo that it can do whatever it wants. If these announcements are accurate, I certainly won’t go to Strasbourg tomorrow,” Dačić said, according to the official Tanjug news agency.
“The Council of Europe has never before admitted something that is not a country,” he added, referring to the fact that a number of countries, including five EU members, still have not recognised Kosovo’s independence, declared in 2008.
Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo flared once again in early April after a Kosovo Serb was arrested for setting fire to Serb-owned cars that switched to Kosovo number plates in line with a demand by the Pristina government.
Following the incident, Dačić accused the Kosovo government of creating a new crisis and seeking to “avoid the obligations” it made during the EU-facilitated dialogue, which aims to normalise relations between the two and facilitate their progress towards eventual EU membership.
The talks this year have resulted in a verbal agreement from both sides on normalising relations and an annexe of how provisions of the agreement will be implemented, but a concrete road map is still missing.
(Zoran Radosavljević | EURACTIV.com)
Source: euractiv.com
