North Kosovo

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic will visit Kosovo on September 9 to present "guidelines and directions of state policy towards Kosovo," he announced on Friday during an official visit to the Clinical Centre of Serbia, N1 television reported.

They plead with Vucic "not to give up the fight for a just, compromise and sustainable solution for KiM (Kosovo and Metohija)" with a message that abandoning this fight would represent "the greatest historical defeat of the Serb people in recent history" and at the same time "the greatest victory of the enemies of the Serb people and their domestic cowards."

"We will not make any decision without you, none, and I am coming to Kosovo and Metohija in September, because I want to talk to all of you and tell you what will be new in the talks about the future of Kosovo and Metohija, to jointly plan, to jointly build and to live jointly," Vucic is quoted as saying.

Thaci told a press conference on Wednesday that he "only meant adding the Presevo valley to Kosovo" when he spoke about "correcting the borders."

And at the same time, "there would be no partition of Kosovo nor autonomy for Kosovo Serbs," he said.

The government will take a stance as soon as it has a concrete proposal on the table, she added.

President Vucic claimed on Friday in an open letter to Kosovo Serbs that Pristina will "not lift a finger" to establish the promised Association of Serb Majority Municipalities in Kosovo as agreed in the EU-mediated Belgrade-Pristina talks on normalising relations.

In it, Vucic calls on Serbs in the province not to react to any possible provocations and targeted misinformation, and points out that Serbia is ready today to fulfill its obligations toward them and protect their lives and peace, if necessary.

The full text of the letter:

"Respected citizens of Kosovo and Metohija,

Dear Serbs,

Kosovo's President, Hashim Thaci, has startled his countrymen and women - and angered some opposition parties - by issuing a series of equivocal and mixed messages on the subject of ethnic partition.

While denying the possibility of ethnic land "swaps" with Serbia, Thaci at the same time has called the inclusion in Kosovo of ethnically Albanian areas of southern Serbia "realizable".

Despite reports that Serbs have been asking to leave the Kosovo Security Force amid an upsurge of political tensions between Belgrade and Pristina, the number of Serbs who want to join the Kosovo Police remains similar to 2014, the force said.

Kosovo Police told BIRN that in 2014, over 5 per cent of applicants were Serbs, "while this year there was around 5 per cent (4.91 per cent)".

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci came under fire from his political opponents after he said on Wednesday that the ongoing Belgrade-Pristina dialogue will include talks on "the correction of borders" - a phrase which his critics claimed actually meant the exchange of land and the partition of Kosovo.