Serbia and Kosovo at the Negotiation Table
Pro-Serbian Rally (karadeniz-press.ro)
European Union is welcoming the start on Tuesday of the direct negotiations between Serbia and the breakaway province of Kosovo, which declared its independence in 2008 and gained recognition from many countries of the world.
Polish national daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita reports that Serbia and Kosovo will sit at the same table, though Serbia continues not to recognize the independence of Kosovo.
They will discuss technical matters such as the problem of the Kosovo passports, unrecognized by Belgrade, the fact that the Serbian minority in Kosovo does not recognize the authority of Pristina, and the people working in state jobs receive their payments from the Serbian government.
Pro-Albanian Rally (illumemag.com)
“Miracles cannot be expected,” the leaders of the Serbian delegation stressed before the negotiations begun, but the reason Serbia accepted to do this is the fact that the regime in Belgrade wished to convey the message that it was “speaking a new language” and “was moving toward of a new direction.”
In fact Serbia wishes to move in the direction of European Union, which is sponsoring these talks as a prerequisite of the integration into the continental political structures.
The Council of Europe is taking advantage of the fact that both countries wish to become members of the EU and attempts to drive the two sides as close as it is possible.
The accusations that engulfed the leadership of Kosovo regarding the organ traffic constituted a serious setback in the negotiations, given that the investigators accused the highest-ranked authorities of the country of harvesting organs from Serbian prisoners they had killed in the first place.
