Northern Kosovo Off Agenda for Pristina-Belgrade Talks

Speaking after a morning meeting with Robert Cooper, the EU’s dialogue facilitator, Tahiri expressed the Kosovo government’s readiness to continue with the EU’s sponsored talks with Belgrade. But only on the condition that those subjects discussed would remain technical and not territorial.

“According to our conversation held this morning, we received encouraging signals that the Serbian side will be part of the next round of talks within the technical dialogue and that [Belgrade’s] request that the discussion about the [northern Kosovo] border crossings should be tackled during the talks, have been refused by the EU and the US,” Tahiri said.

Tahiri added that Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, who met Cooper last night, had made Pristina’s stance clear saying that it will continue to talk to Serbia “as two neighbours.”

Friday’s scheduled talks between Serbia and Kosovo are the seventh round of EU-mediated discussions between the two countries. The talks began properly in March and focused solely on technical issues, such as freedom of movement, telecommunications and energy-sharing.

For the past two and a half months there has been ongoing tension, coupled with occasional outbursts of violence in northern Kosovo. Local Serbs have been holding 16 barricades, blocking the main access roads to the two border crossings, Jarinje and Brnjak.

The border crossings act as a gateway between Kosovo and Serbia.