ZSO formation is condition to continue dialogue: "EU must influence Pristina to meet its obligation"

Photo: Tanjug/Kristina Maslarevic

The director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric reiterated today that the formation of the Community of Serb Municipalities is a condition for further progress in the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina and that it remains to be seen whether the European Union will influence Pristina to approach the negotiations in a serious manner.

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Djuric said that the goal of the Serbian delegation during the last round of the dialogue in Brussels was to seriously discuss the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) and the property issue, but Pristina did not want that.

"The EU noted that, but we will see if they will do their job and bring them back to the negotiating table in a serious way. As for us, as long as Pristina is not ready to deliver the ZSO, they can forget about anything they expect," Djuric told TV Pink.

He stressed that the ZSO is on the table because President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic pointed out to Josep Borrell and Miroslav Lajcak after the talks in Washington, that in order to achieve further progress in the dialogue, it is necessary to finally implement the agreement on the ZSO, so that those talks can have credibility.

Djuric said that Prime Minister of Kosovo Avdullah Hoti and the coordinator for the dialogue, Skender Hyseni, said that there were no problems and that they would come to the next meeting with a full delegation to discuss the statute of the ZSO and work on its establishment.

"The day before the meeting, we received information that there was some commotion in Pristina, that Hoti was threatened not to talk about it. We said that the meeting can take place, but that the ZSO would be the first and essential topic of conversation for us," said Djuric.

He added that the Serbian delegation presented the situation related to the ZSO based on the already reached agreements, and that after that they went into discussing the issue of property.

The Serbian team, he says, seriously prepared for such a meeting, the delegation also included the vice governor of the National Bank, experts on private, public and church property, who presented a concept of how to finally create mechanisms for resolving that issue.

"The Pristina side came without a single paper, and Hyseni spoke about how the Serbs owe the Toplica District to Albanians, how we burned 236 Albanian villages there after 1878, how we have been aggressors and occupiers in that area for 13 centuries... I pointed out to the Turkish censuses which proves how many Serbs and how many Albanians had been there, the charters of our medieval rulers, the papers of Albanian historians that say Serbs were the majority in Kosovo and Metohija," said Djuric.

(Telegraf.rs)