Serbia Lacks Interest for Relations' Normalization; Kosovo's V.Minister

Implementation of the Brussels and Ohrid agreement between Kosovo and Serbia is seen as hardly possible even during 2024. 

Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora, Kreshnik Ahmeti, declared to the local media that Serbia has no will to have a solution for the normalization of relations. 

"Serbia has no interest, shows no will to have a solution between our relations as the Republic of Kosovo and Serbia...", he says. 

The deputy of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, Pal Lekaj, is skeptical about progress in the dialogue, although he says that Prime Minister Kurti has harmed Kosovo by accepting in principle the Association's draft statute. 

On the other hand, the connoisseur of the dialogue process, Dritëro Arifi, tells KosovaPress that by May 2024, he expects there to be movement regarding the implementation of the basic agreement. He suggests Prime Minister Kurti to move positively regarding the obligations he received in the dialogue process. 

In February 2023, Kosovo and Serbia reached the basic agreement in Brussels, while also agreeing on the annex to the implementation of this agreement in Ohrid, North Macedonia, but without placing the signatures due to the refusal of the Serbian president, Vucic. 

During the year 2023, Kurti and Vucic met two more times, first in May and also in September, but without finding agreement on the sequencing of the implementation plan of the basic agreement. 

On the other hand, seven days after their last meeting, a paramilitary group led by the former vice president of the Serbian List, Milan Radoj?i?, carried out a terrorist attack on Kosovo in Banjska i Zveçan, where police sergeant Afrim Bunjaku lost his life. 

After that, on October 21, Euro-American diplomats presented a new plan for the implementation of the Brussels and Ohrid agreement, where, among other things, they presented a draft for the implementation of Article 7 of the agreement, which talks about the self-management of the Serbs in Kosovo, therefore the establishment of the Association, which Prime Minister Kurti said he is ready to sign, alongside the basic agreement and the annex, but which was said to have been rejected by Serbian President Aleksandër Vucic in the meeting with the heads of Germany, France, Italy and the EU. 

Kurti has recently expressed his readiness to draft a draft of the Association, after the declaration of the EU emissary for dialogue, Miroslav Lajçak, that the Association is an internal issue of Kosovo.