KOSOVSKA MITROVICA – Head of the Serbian government office for Kosovo Marko Djuric has said that the Kosovo authorities are responsible for the fact that the Brussels agreement on the normalisation of relations between Belgrade and Pristina has not been implemented in full.
A very important part of that document, signed in Brussels on April 19, 2013, has not been implemented, the one referring to the creation of the legal framework needed to establish the Association of Serb Municipalities, he said in Kosovska Mitrovica on Tuesday.
He rejected Pristina’s claims that Belgrade was to blame for the delay in the implementation of the Brussels agreement and stated that the Kosovo authorities had been unwilling to sign the judiciary agreement for over a year, explaining that it said that courts and prosecutors’ offices with mostly Serb staff would be established in those areas where Serbs formed the majority of the population.
The authorities in Pristina have yet to accept a meeting of the working group for changes in regulations, whose worrk is crucial for the creation of the legal framework needed to form the Association of Serb Municipalities, Djuric pointed out.
“It is impossible to bring relations back to normal if we make inappropriate statements every day and every week and expect only concessions for ourselves,” he noted.
Pristina’s unwillingness to do as agreed is also the reason why the agreements on the police and cadastre and a number of other very important provisions have not been fulfilled, Djuric remarked.
“The Brussels agreement is not a buffet table from which officials of the provisional institutions in Pristina can take what they like and leave what they do not like,” he told reporters in northern Kosovska Mitrovica.
“We expect the provisional institutions in Pristina to implement the Brussels agreement seriously and responsibly, because it is in the interest of all the sides,” he stated.
Belgrade and Pristina are having informal consultations concerning the energy sector, and a meeting of the working group that will review the implementation of the integrated border management agreement is scheduled for September 4, he said.
Djuric does not expect any big topics to be resolved with success before Kosovo gets a new government and the political situation there stabilises.
