Attempts to revive talks between Kosovo and Serbia have begun, with meetings of the two countries’ leaders and senior US and EU envoys scheduled for Saturday, it has been announced.
It will be the first time Serbia’s president, Aleksandar Vučić, and Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, have agreed to meet an international delegation since a shootout at a monastery in northern Kosovo last month left three assailants and one Kosovan police officer dead.
The meetings have been set up after a flurry of diplomacy involving senior officials in the US, France, Germany, Italy and the EU.
A spokesperson for the EU high representative for foreign affairs, Josep Borrell, said: “The purpose of the visit is to make concrete progress on the implementation of the agreement on the path to normalisation and on de-escalation after the latest developments.”
He said there were “clear expectations” that the parties would resume the normalisation talks “without delays or conditions”.
Talks collapsed after the attack in September, with accusations by Kosovo that the EU and US, in an effort to limit Russian influence in the Balkans, were appeasing Serbia because of its links to the Kremlin.
This month the Kosovan president, Vjosa Osmani, accused Vučić of pursuing a strategy “straight from the book of [Slobodan] Milošević” and said talks would not resume until sanctions were imposed on Serbia.
In the aftermath of the attack in the monastery, the Kosovan police discovered a huge cache of weapons – enough, they said, to arm hundreds.
Pristina claims Belgrade financed and supported the ambush by well-armed Serb paramilitaries near the village of Banjska and also ordered a buildup of troops on the border. Tensions have since been defused but hostility and distrust between the two countries prevails.
Vučić has denied involvement in the attack and this week a Serbian politician who admitted he had taken part in the deadly skirmish was arrested.
Saturday’s meetings are expected to be attended by the EU’s special representative for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Miroslav Lajčák, who will be accompanied by foreign policy and security advisers for France, Germany and Italy, Emmanuel Bonne, Jens Plötner and Francesco Talo respectively.
The US’s western Balkan envoy, Gabriel Escobar, will also travel to Kosovo and Serbia for the meetings, the spokesperson for Borrell said.
