The European Union Special Representative for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, met with Chief Negotiator of Kosovo for the dialogue, Besnik Bislimi, and Petar Petkovic from the Serbian side to discuss the controversial establishment of the Association of Serb Municipalities with Pristina insisting that each article of the agreements are independent and should not be conditional.
While the meeting did not produce concrete results, Bislimi said they discussed how the parties see the direction of talks, adding that “everything related to the implementation of the Ohrid Agreement” was on the agenda.
He added that during Lajcak’s visit to Pristina last week, documents related to the competences of the mechanism for the implementation of the normalisation agreement were presented, mainly related to the Declaration on the Disappeared and the implementation of the association.
“In the agreement we reached in Ohrid, it is clearly stated that none of the articles can condition other articles and that all articles will be implemented independently. Also, it is said that neither party will block the implementation of any specific article,” he told the media after the meeting, in reference to Serbia’s insistence that the association should be formed before other articles are honoured.
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“This is the guide for us. I don’t believe that the EU is willing to let go of a document that they themselves brought and published on their website”, Bislimi said.
Petkovic confirmed that the Serbian side has insisted on forming the Association of Municipalities with a Serbian majority in Kosovo, but that, according to him, it is not easy to talk with Pristina.
“When we had to talk about important issues, such as the further implementation of the formation of the Association, the issue of missing persons, but also about other important ones, such as freedom of movement, for issues related to the very lives of Serbs in Kosovo, the institutional violence of [Kosovo Prime Minister Albin] Kurti, which happens to Serbs every day, the attacks of the Kosovo Police , shooting at Serbs… for these, Bislimi did not want to give any concrete answers. All the time, with various interventions, he tried to make the flow of the dialogue meaningless,” Petkovic told reporters.
Meanwhile, after the meeting, Lajçak wrote on Twitter that he discussed with the parties the path towards the normalisation of relations, adding the meeting aimed to “clarify open issues”.
Kosovo, Serbia fall short of diffusing tensions, agree to resolve war missing cases
Kosovo and Serbia’s leaders met in Brussels on Tuesday (2 May) for talks on the EU-backed plan to normalise relations, agreeing to cooperate on resolving cases of missing persons but stumbling on lowering tensions in Serb-majority North Kosovo.
The creation of the association, a structure Belgrade says will protect the rights of minority Serbs in Kosovo, was agreed on in 2013 amid ongoing EU-backed dialogue but was ruled unconstitutional in 2015. Since then, Kosovo has refused to implement it in the suggested form, instead presenting a model based on Croatia’s.
Meanwhile, the General Secretary of the ruling party Vetvendosje, Alim Rama, said the current draft for the association, presented by the Management Team last month, is unacceptable.
EU slams Kosovo's dismissal of Serbian association of municipalities team
The dismissal of the Management Team for the Association of Municipalities with a Serb Majority by Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, just one day after the latest high-level EU-backed meeting with Serbia in Brussels, sparked criticism from the EU.
Kurti met …
“That statute presented there, which was rejected, does not have any article that mentions the Republic of Kosovo…It is fascist…It doesn’t go with the principles of dialogue,” he said at a panel in Mitrovica on Monday.
Meanwhile, the German special envoy for Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Manuel Sarrazin, said that while there is no agreement, there is hope.
“Perhaps there is still no agreement between the two parties regarding the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities, but now, at least for the first time, there are concepts on the table so that Serbian interests on the one hand and Kosovo’s ability to act as a state, on the other hand, can agree. Until now, it has always been only a theoretical discussion”, Sarrazin told German media Welt.
(Alice Taylor | Exit.al)
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