Serbia announces new Kosovo negotiating team

28/08/2007

Serbia's new negotiating team for the Kosovo status talks will again be chaired by the country's prime minister and president, Belgrade said on Monday.

(The New York Times - 28/08/07; Reuters, Beta, B92, Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, Serbian Government - 27/08/07)

Serbia’s Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic (right) will take part in the negotiations on Thursday (August 30th). [Getty Images]

Serbia has formed a negotiating team for the latest round of Kosovo status talks. As in previous rounds, it will be headed by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic.

The entire government will be part of that team, Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said on Monday (August 27th). The latest talks are being held under the aegis of the six-nation Contact Group, comprised of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States.

Last month, the group tasked a trio of diplomats -- Frank Wisner of the United States, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko of Russia and Germany's Wolfgang Ischinger, representing the EU -- with leading this last ditch effort to find a solution to the Kosovo status issue.

Officials from Belgrade and Pristina are due to have separate meetings with the so-called "troika" in Vienna on Thursday. However, Kostunica and Tadic will not attend. Serbia will instead be represented by a "political delegation", headed by Samardzic and including Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic.

Belgrade's plans for the talks are to have individual government members participate in each concrete meeting, as well as to ask experts from different fields to assist the negotiating team, as needed.

Citing unofficial sources, Belgrade-based B92 reported on Monday that there will be two representatives of the Kosovo Serbs in the Serbian negotiating team. The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party reportedly has rejected a call by the Serb National Council of Northern Kosovo that its deputy leader, Tomislav Nikolic, also join the team.

Unlike Belgrade, Kosovo is expected to be represented by its most senior officials in the Vienna talks Thursday. According to Serbian news agency Beta, its delegation will include President Fatmir Sejdiu, Parliament Speaker Kole Berisha and Prime Minister Agim Ceku.

They will be accompanied by Hashim Thaci and Veton Surroi, the leaders of the Democratic Party of Kosovo and the ORA party, as well as other members of the Kosovo negotiation team.

Team spokesman Skender Hyseni said Kosovo Albanian leaders would deliver a strong message -- namely, that Kosovo's territorial integrity must be preserved and that independence is a non-negotiable topic in the negotiations, which will end on December 10th.

The Contact Group will then report to the UN on results of the talks.

Following 13 months of largely fruitless negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, the former UN special envoy for Kosovo status talks, Martti Ahtisaari, submitted his proposals for a settlement, envisioning that the province be granted internationally supervised independence.

Kosovo Albanians, who make up 90% of the province's population of 2 million people, have embraced the plan. Belgrade has flatly rejected it, saying it can offer broad autonomy but not outright independence.

Calling for an end to the current political limbo, Ahtisaari urged the EU on Sunday to start implementing his plan once the troika reports back to the UN.

"It is high time to move from the conflict-management phase to the endgame," he told participants at a forum in Bled, Slovenia. "Otherwise the stalemate will persist, but the EU cannot afford Kosovo to become just another frozen conflict. Doing nothing is not an option."