TIRANA, September 14 – Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti revealed on Thursday after the EU mediated meeting with the Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic that he had found out about the existence of a Serb document that first requires the creation of the Association of the Serb minority in northern Kosovo and then potentially to continue with the implementation of the Agreement of Ohrid.
Kurti said that this conditionality of Serbia has become the position of the Slovak emissary, Miroslav Lajcak, and pointed out that such conditionality must be overcome in order to move forward.
“I found out today that it has been 6 months that the work with the sequential implementation of the agreement has not been going on, because the conditionality of Serbia has been imposed. I did not have this document before. Serbia’s conditionality has turned into the attitude of the EU envoy, Lajcak. In order to move forward, this must be overcome,” said Kurti in a press conference after the failed meeting.
Kurti said that such conditionality is against the Ohrid Agreement. “To ignore the essence of the Ohrid agreement, and to establish the Association as a precondition, we are almost in April 2013, and this is in contradiction with the basic agreement itself,” said the Kosovo PM.
In the meantime European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said that “we tried hard but, unfortunately, it was not possible to bridge the differences today between the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo.”
Borrell, who mediated the negotiations and has said he sees resolving the long-running dispute between Belgrade and Pristina as essential to their efforts to join the European Union, said that Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti rejected Brussels’ compromise proposal.
The renewed effort came after the EU worked out a plan early this year that it had hoped would break the stalemate. However, Kosovo has insisted that Serbia first recognize its independence before relations with its Balkan neighbor can be normalized.
In 2008, nearly a decade after a bloody war, Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, but Belgrade refused to recognize the move.
“Kurti was not ready to take a step forward,” Borrell said, adding that the Kosovar leader “insisted instead on formalizing de facto recognition as the first step.”
For his part, Kurti blamed the Serbian side, saying that there was “full readiness” from Kosovo to work out an agreement and alleging that Vucic had “sabotaged” the talks, according to news agencies reporting from Brussels.
Kurti also claimed the European Union had sided with Belgrade, saying Brussels “only adopted Serbia’s conditionality” of establishing an association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo, which was “unacceptable” to Pristina. /argumentum.al
