TIRANA, July 8 – Prime Minister Edi Rama has stated that the draft statute proposed by him for municipalities with Serbian majority in the north of Kosovo was an unsolicited contribution to positively influence this process.
At the joint press conference in Belgrade with the president of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade where he was on a visit on Friday, the last leg of his two-day Balkan tour, Rama said that “the proposal of a draft statute is a contribution that I believe that it is very positive in content, but it does not pretend to be a contribution that the parties must receive and accept, or it is not a contribution consulted with any of the parties.”
Rama said that this is a written contribution, which has been submitted to the two “godfathers” of the Franco-German plan, the president of France and the chancellor of Germany and the president of the European Council.
“Then it is up to the parties to search for it, to read it or not to read it, to consider it or not to consider it. I believe that it is a positive contribution, I believe that dragging out the association of municipalities with a Serb majority is a strategic mistake and it is also a strategic mistake to drag out the creation of conditions for Kosovo Serbs to exercise their religious rights and for the church to have what belongs to them within the constitutional framework of the Republic of Kosovo,” added Rama.
Asked about Vucic’s request for the UN Security Council to discuss the situation in the north of Kosovo, Rama said that he was not familiar with the content of this proposal.
Touching upon the situation in the north of Kosovo, he said that no one should underestimate the risk of escalation of tension and that the only way is not the way of increasing tensions, but the way of dialogue and accord based on the agreement that originates from the Franco-German plan.
“I don’t want to repeat in Belgrade what I said in Pristina to the Kosovo authorities, but I want to add that no one should underestimate the risk of the escalation of that tension to the point where we find ourselves in conditions when an armed movement is involved in that which should we allow to happen,” Rama said. /argumentum.al
