Without any result, a meeting of the chief negotiators of Serbia and Kosovo was held in Brussels on Monday, with the mediation of the European Union (EU) special representative for dialogue, Miroslav Lajčak.
The chief negotiator of Serbia, Petar Petković, confirmed that during the meeting, the Serbian side again insisted on the formation of the Community of Municipalities with a Serbian majority in Kosovo.
However, as he asserted, the Kosovo negotiator, Bekim Bisljimi, did not give any concrete answers when important issues should have been discussed. As those issues, he listed "the formation of the Community, further steps regarding the Declaration on Missing Persons, freedom of movement, issues related to the life of Serbs in Kosovo, institutional violence against Serbs, attacks by the Kosovo Police, shooting at Serbs".
"Bisljimi didn't want to give any concrete answers to that, he was trying all the time to make the flow of the dialogue meaningless with various intrusions," Petković told reporters.
Kosovo's chief negotiator Bisljimi stated that only the direction in which the dialogue is going and everything "related to the implementation of the agreement" were discussed.
He confirmed that during his visit to Pristina and Belgrade at the end of last week, Lajčak brought several documents related to the competence of the mechanism for the implementation of the agreement, and the competence to apply the Declaration on the Missing. There is also Lajčak's approach that the implementation of point seven of the agreement, which refers to the formation of the Community of Municipalities with a Serbian majority in Kosovo, should be continued.
"The agreement we reached in Ohrid clearly states that no article of the agreement conditions another article and that all provisions will be applied independently. It also says that no party will block the application of one or another point of the agreement. This is a road map for us. I don't believe that the EU is ready to avoid a document that it itself created and published," said Bisljimi at the end of the meeting.
For now, there is no indication of what the next steps will be and when the main negotiators would meet again.
Since the agreement reached by the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo, on February 27 in Brussels and March 18 in Ohrid, the negotiators first meet to harmonize positions. In case of agreement, the conditions are created for the convening of a new round of talks at the highest level so that the leaders can put a political stamp on what the negotiators have agreed on.
Judging by the atmosphere after the meeting on May 15, it is unlikely to expect a meeting of the leaders in Brussels soon.
This was the first meeting of the main negotiators after the high-level meeting between Kosovo Prime Minister Aljbin Kurti (Albin) and Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić on May 2 in Brussels.
At that meeting, political leaders agreed on a joint declaration on missing persons from the last war in Kosovo, while the Management Team presented the first Draft Statute of the Community of Municipalities with a Serbian majority in Kosovo.
EU envoy Miroslav Lajčak, before the meeting in Brussels, wrote on social networks that full focus on the normalization of relations and the application of the Agreement towards normalization is necessary.
On February 27, Kosovo and Serbia reached an Agreement on Normalization of Relations in Brussels, while on March 18 in Ohrid, they agreed on an Annex for its implementation.
Speaking about meetings in Pristina and Belgrade, including with Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti and Serbian President Vučić, Lajčak said he conveyed to the leaders the expectation to focus on normalizing relations and implementing the Ohrid Agreement.
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