PARIS: Kosovo’s foreign minister said yesterday he anticipated a breakthrough with Serbia when the two countries’ prime ministers meet next week to discuss an end to the ethnic partition of the former Serbian province.
Serbia does not recognise Kosovo’s 2008 secession, but is under pressure from the European Union to improve ties and help overcome a split between Kosovo’s Albanian majority and a small Serb enclave in the north.
The two parties failed to reach an agreement on March 21 after lengthy talks between Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci that were hosted by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Brussels.
Talks are set to resume
on April 2.
“This is a dialogue about the normalisation of relations between two countries as separate and independent countries,” Kosovo Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj told Reuters in an interview in Paris.
“I think we will have a breakthrough by April 2. We are working on that, but I think the reason why we didn’t have a breakthrough is in Belgrade and not Pristina.”
Ashton has been mediating talks between Dacic and Thaci since late last year, as the EU pushes to establish functional, neighbourly relations between Serbia and Kosovo five years after the former province declared independence with the backing of the West.
The clock is now ticking towards a mid-April progress report from Ashton that will decide whether the EU launches membership talks with Serbia.
REUTERS
