A European diplomatic offensive to revive talks between Kosovo and Serbia failed as Belgrade maintained Friday it was useless to resume talks while tensions in northern Kosovo were running high, writes EU Business web-site today.
“It is just a postponement of the talks,” Serbia’s chief negotiator for Kosovo, Borko Stefanovic, said after meeting EU mediator Robert Cooper in Belgrade.
“The moment we reach a solution (on the disputed border crossings that sparked the violence) we will resume a dialogue,” he stressed.
Cooper did not comment on the meeting, mentions the online edition.
Brussels has been pushing for the talks to continue, focussing on other subjects, but Belgrade insists those will have to wait until the row over the crossings is solved.
The EU-sponsored dialogue was interrupted last week following a new wave of violence in northern Kosovo where the Serb population, which remains loyal to Belgrade, is concentrated.
The situation there remains tense with local Serbs setting up dozens of roadblocks to prevent the ethnic Albanian authorities in Pristina from taking control of the main access roads to Serbia.
Late July saw violent clashes in northern Kosovo when Serb protesters confronted Kosovo police who tried to take control of two border posts to enforce a trade ban with Serbia.
Stefanovic stressed that Belgrade remained committed to the talks saying the dialogue is “postponed, not broken off”.
Serbia’s Minister for Kosovo, Goran Bogdanovic, who also met with Cooper, said he told the EU diplomat that “there is no point… in talking about telecommunications or electricity while there are barricades in the north”.
“The goal is not to talk just to talk to each other but to implement on the spot what has been agreed,” Bogdanovic told journalists.
“When you are facing barricades, people’s dissatisfaction, nothing can be implemented on the spot,” he said.
In Pristina, General Erhard Drews, commander of NATO -led peacekeepers in Kosovo (KFOR), said his troops were ready “to act on barricades at any point of time if the safe and secure environment is endangered or if there is an urgent need to provide for freedom of movement”.
In an ongoing dispute about two border crossings between Kosovo and Serbia proper, local Kosovo Serbs have for weeks been manning 16 barricades blocking the main access roads to the posts.
The new delay in the talks comes at a sensitive time for Belgrade which next week hopes to get a positive recommendation from the European Commission for its EU membership bid.
The European executive’s vice president Maros Sefcovic has also arrived in Belgrade, but no details of his meetings were available.
Belgrade is under increasing pressure to resolve its problems with Kosovo from EU members like Germany who have said real progress in the talks is a condition for membership.
But Stefanovic said he expected the EU commission report to be positive on the dialogue “because we have shown we’re fully capable of talks with Pristina”.
Since March, the European Union has brokered negotiations aimed at solving technical issues between Pristina, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, and Belgrade, which refuses to recognise it.
Source finchannel.com
