Izvor: N1 televizija, 06.Avg.2018, 17:13   (ažurirano 02.Apr.2020.)

Pristina again denies any partition of Kosovo

Pristina officials reiterated on Monday that there would not be any division or territory swap with Belgrade and that Serbia's southern region should secede and join Kosovo, N1 reported.

Earlier this month, several Pristina’s top leaders have denied any talks with Belgrade on the partition or the exchange of the territories under the north (of Kosovo) for the south (of Serbia) slogan but insisted on Serbia’s >> Pročitaj celu vest na sajtu N1 televizija << southern region’s right to secede.

“In the dialogue with Belgrade, Pristina must present the demand for the Presevo Valley (Serbia’s region populated mostly by ethnic Albanians) to join us,” Hashim Thaci, Kosovo’s President said, according to the Pristina media.

He added that Kosovo’s institutions had been criticised for not putting the issue on the dialogue agenda before.

Thaci said that the secession of the Presevo Valley and the region fall under the Pristina authority did not mean giving up the northern part of Kosovo, mostly populated by the local Serbs.

“A big misunderstanding has to be clarified. I suggested the correction of borders as a possibility of reaching a final peace agreement. Neither the division of Kosovo nor the territory exchange is acceptable to me,” Thaci reiterated.

He added that “we demand the return of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja (the three municipalities in the Presevo valley) to Kosovo since Belgrade has not succeeded in granting them the same rights the Serbs have in Kosovo.”

Kosovo’s Parliament speaker Kadri Veseli said that “no partition of Kosovo will happen. We won’t talk about that issue. Kosovo will join the UN, NATO and the European Union with borders of its independence.”

Kosovo declared independence in 2008, but Belgrade does not recognise it as a state, saying the move was illegal since Kosovo was Serbia’s province according to both Yugoslav and Serbia's constitution.

Pristina says it’s status changed with the break-up of former Yugoslavia and held a referendum in 1992 with the vast majority votes in favour of independence. Belgrade maintains the referendum has been illegal since the then constitution recognises only the popular vote held on the whole of the territory.

Three years after the war in the ex-Balkan country ended in 1995, Belgrade launched an offensive officially said to be against the terrorists in Kosovo.

In March 1999, the NATO-led air campaign against the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, consisted of Serbia and Montenegro, to halt, as it called, the army and police forces’ repression of Kosovo’s Albanians.

The bombing ended in June with an agreement between NATO and Belgrade signed in the Macedonian town of Kumanovo, under which Serbia’s forces completely withdrew from Kosovo.

Belgrade has no power in Kosovo since then, apart from in a northern chunk of the territory where the Serbs create a majority.

The Belgrade – Pristina dialogue, facilitated by the EU, has been going on for years and the next meeting between Thaci and his Serbia’s counterpart Aleksandar Vucic, scheduled for September in Brussels, is expected to be an introduction into a final step toward a legally binding agreement.

However, the messages that the two sides have been recently exchanging show that they are far from reaching a compromise.

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