In 2015, Serbian officials will travel to Pristina and meet with representatives of the Kosovo provisional institutions, but Belgrade officials claim that these will not be bilateral meetings.
Despite the fact that the newly elected Kosovo Foreign Minister, Hashim Thaci, said that he had already invited both Serbia’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to visit Kosovo, and that there is willingness for this to happen, a necessary condition would be for the meetings to adopt a status-neutral format.
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed that during next year he will go to Pristina and that a meeting with Thaci is planned. However, Dacic claims that he is not going to Pristina at the call of the new Foreign Ministry of Kosovo’s provisional institutions: “I will visit the OSCE mission in Kosovo and Metohija and on this occasion I will talk with Thaci. The plan is to visit all OSCE missions, including in Pristina. It is not a bilateral visit.”
Serbia will chair the OSCE from 1 January 2015. Dacic said that Thaci will not receive invitations for any meeting that will be organized in Belgrade, under the auspices of the OSCE, because Pristina does not participate in the work of this organization.
The Head of the Parliamentary Committee for Kosovo and Metohija, Milovan Drecun, said that the only acceptable solution for Belgrade would be a status-neutral format: “If Thaci wants to trick Serbian officials into coming to Pristina as officials of a neighbouring state, then that is a big mistake, and does not show good intentions. Direct contacts are not a problem but actually desirable. The dialogue should not be conducted only in Brussels. It can also be held in Belgrade or Pristina, but only if it is status-neutral. Ultimately, these meetings cannot be official talks between ‘two countries.’”
Drecun recalls that Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic already traveled to Kosovo and Metohija, as a province in the Republic of Serbia.
It is expected that both the Serbian Foreign Minister and Minister of Economy will travel to Pristina to attend the Western Balkans Foreign Ministers Conference. The previous event, held two months ago in Belgrade, was held without state symbols. Therefore, it is expected that Pristina, as host, will also organize meetings without flags and national symbols. These meetings are attended by representatives of Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
