Kosovo government

Belgrade-based press is saying this in articles published on Tuesday.

Daily Blic said it learned from diplomatic sources that "pressure from western countries to solve the open issue between Serbia and Kosovo is slowly waning."

Courts in the north of Kosovo are plagued with stalled trials and postponed hearings, which some blame on a backlog of cases and lack of translators, while others claim that the courts themselves are not doing enough.

"Do we have any draft solutions in Brussels? We do not, we are not even close to it," President Aleksandar Vucic said in a speech before thousands of Serbs in the Serb-run northern half of the divided Kosovo town of Mitrovica.

The second day of Vucic's visit to Kosovo was marked by incidents and the roadblocks put up by ethnic Albanians on the way to the Serb village of Banje.

The president then decided to return to Kosovska Mitrovica, as police informed him that the blockades were two kilometers ahead of the convoy, and that it was not safe to continue the trip.

"According to the information I have, in the investigation stage, we have obtained evidence that proves that 19,000 war veterans have illegally taken benefits from the [government] Commission on War Veterans and Invalids," Kosovo's state prosecutor Aleksander Lumezi told Radio Free Europe on Thursday.

Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore said that requests found in the minutes of the team's meeting call for the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) to have competencies on property, privatization, economy, and be a part of Serbia's education system.

The Kosovo government announced on Tuesday that Pristina has lifted temporary trade barriers introduced on July 18 to protect its domestic produce.

Leaked documents that BIRN has seen reveal that Kosovo Serb stakeholders that the team tasked to draft the controversial statute in Kosovo on the Association of Serbian Municipalities consulted believe the statute should allow the education and health sectors to remain reliant on Serbia.

Amid an ongoing debate in Kosovo over the pay of the Prime Minister, which Ramush Haradinaj has doubled, the government is meeting union discontent over a new Law on Levelling Salaries.

"The chief negotiator from Pristina (Avni Arifi) is uttering incredible words than nobody's reacting to - and many would have to," the head of the Serbian Government's Office for Kosovo and Metohija told Tanjug.