Kosovo, Serbia Trade Blame for Logjam in Dialogue

Kosovo and Serbia delegations again exchanged familiar accusations of not fulfilling the obligations they have undertaken at the latest round of the EU-facilitated dialogue on normalization of relations between the two countries.

The two delegations met on Tuesday in Brussels convened by the EU's envoy for the dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak.

After the meetings, as happened before the during the ten-year dialogue, the delegations had different versions about what happened in the meeting and accused the other party of failing to meet its obligations.

"We presented remarks about the agreements and Serbia's steps so far, for example the agreement on integrated border management, the recognition of diplomas, freedom of movement, the agreement on the footnote [Regional representation Agreement], and we have seen that the Serbian side has not delivered on its obligations," Kosovo's Deputy PM, Besnik Bislimi, head of the Kosovo delegation, said after the meeting.

The head of Serbia's delegation, the president of Serbia's Office for Kosovo, Petar Petkovic, blamed the Kosovo delegation for the impasse, saying that "not a word was mentioned in the [Kosovo] presentation about missing persons [from the 1998-9 Kosovo war]".

"We see yesterday and today, but also in previous days, how Pristina, [Kosovo] Albanian politicians are talking about some [war] crimes, the issue of missing persons [from the Kosovo war] and so on, but when they come to Brussels and when they need to answer specifically how to solve this issue, how to find all the missing, Pristina did not raise this issue with a single word, in its presentation.

"Our delegation is the one that raised the issue of the missing and everything related to that issue", Petkovic insisted on...