The head of the Office for Kosovo in the Serbian Government, Petar Petković, stated on December 27 that the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, “unsuccessfully tried to throw the ball into Belgrade’s court for the failure of the dialogue”.
This statement by Petković comes after Kurti questioned the European Union about why the formation of the Association of Serb-majority municipalities has been discussed for several years in the Brussels dialogue, stating, “if the draft statute is an internal issue of Kosovo, why discuss it?”
While responding to journalists’ questions at a press conference on December 27 in Pristina, Kurti referred to the statements of the dialogue mediator, Miroslav Lajčák, according to whom the issue of the draft statute is “only an internal matter of Kosovo”.
For the formation of the Association of Serb-majority municipalities, Kosovo and Serbia have agreed within the framework of the EU-mediated dialogue, and the Association was supposed to give greater decision-making power to Serbs in Kosovo.
A draft statute for the Association was presented to Kosovo and Serbia in October by representatives of the EU, the United States, France, Germany, and Italy.
“Now, in addition to the letter from the Prime Minister of Serbia, Ana Brnabić, there is a new stance that perhaps needs to be addressed: if the draft statute is an internal issue of Kosovo, why did we mention it at the negotiating table in Brussels? If the draft statute has been an internal issue of Kosovo, why have we raised this in Brussels for the past two years or now ten years, one less topic, let’s move forward,” Kurti said.
Petković, through a statement, said that Kurti “is the one who violates all possible agreements reached in Brussels and destroys every effort to normalize relations with Belgrade”.
He emphasized that the agreements reached “clearly state” who writes the statute of the Association, how it should look, but Kurti “does not want” to create it.
According to the statement, Serbia’s red lines have not changed: non-recognition of Kosovo and its non-membership in international organizations.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, through a letter sent to Brussels, which Radio Free Europe has seen, expressed reservations about the Agreement on the way to normalize relations that the parties reached in late February in Brussels and later in March, agreed on its implementation annex.
“The Agreement on the path to normalize relations and its implementation annex, as referred to in this statement, is considered acceptable only in the context that does not include de facto or de jure recognition of Kosovo,” was stated in the document through which Serbia expressed its position.
