BRUSSELS – President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti met for the second time in the context of the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue today, with no apparent progress made. Vučić described the meeting as “even worse” than the one held in June, while Kurti said he proposed a 6-point Peace Declaration, which was rejected.
Following the meeting, Vučić said that the Serbian side accepted the proposals prepared by the EU, while the Kosovo side rejected them.
“We have received EU proposals that have been harmonized with our chief negotiators and Serbia has fully agreed with what the EU has proposed, three points – to intensify efforts to identify the remains of missing persons, to refrain from actions that could potentially destabilize the situation in on the ground and third, that the chief negotiators meet regularly once a month and prepare meetings when necessary. We could not agree on these three points”, President of Serbia said.
He said that the rejection of the second point, on refraining from destabilising actions, was “especially interesting”, adding that Kurti accused Serbia of committing three genocides over Kosovo Albanians in the 19th and 20th century, with the last one taking place in 1999.
Earlier during the meeting, Vučić showed the interlocutors the photographs of, as Radio-Television of Serbia reported, 80 ethnically and religioulsly motivated attacks on Kosovo Serbs since the beginning of the year.
Following the meeting, PM Kurti said that he had proposed that the two countries sign a peace agreement based on a 6 points, but it was rejected by the Serbian side before even presenting it, Euronews Albania reports.
“It was refused without even being read first, this indicates their non-compliance toward an agreement”, Kurti said.
The Prime Minister of Kosovo added that the agreement had been carefully compiled and described it as “well-balanced”.
Kurti said that as part of the issue of the missing persons, Kosovo side asked for the words “facing the past” to be included, which was accepted by the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Borrell, but Vučić did not agree to discuss this point.
He said that he presented the President of Serbia with three books about Serbia’s crimes against Albanians, but that he received only insults as a gift from him.
“We will make sure that everyone exercises their rights. Kosovo was under an international protectorate, under UNMIK, EULEX, now under the Special Court, and we have always been under the supervision of international justice, which was not the case with Serbia,” he said.
He said he was against any violence in Kosovo, especially against minorities.
“Those who want division, such acts suit them,” Kurti said, Beta reports.
EU Special Representative for Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue Miroslav Lajčak, who met separately with Vučić and Kurti earlier during the day, said after the meeting that it was a hard one and that it showed very different approaches of the two sides, hence very little progress was achieved.
The only thing that was agreed is that the Dialogue would continue, with the meeting on the technical level scheduled for August.