Removing the Peace Park from the main Mitrovica Bridge now depends exclusively on the establishment of the Community/Association of Serbian Municipalities, as reported yesterday by Zeri, saying that this was the position of Serbian officials, as well as that the question of solving the Peace Park currently was blocked. The newspapers also reported that it will be a part of a package of agreements on four points.
Serbian representative in Kosovo’s government and a member of the Serbian delegation in the talks in Brussels, Ljubomir Maric, argues on the other hand that the bridge on the Ibar was not a point of the Brussels agreement or a part of any package deal, indirectly acknowledging that without the formation of the ZSO the issue will not be discussed. “Anything else does not need to be discussed until the ZSO is formed,” said Maric to KoSSev.
The mayor of South Mitrovica Agim Bahtiri for the Pristina newspaper confirmed that “the barricades on the Ibar,” (Peace Park), cannot be removed until the formation of the “Association”. He noted that this issue has been blocked because neither Pristina nor Belgrade, have been able to “sign the agreement by which four topics are included as a package.”
“There is no agreement, these are just the media states which I do not want to comment on. We know what are the three issues being discussed – Telecom, energy and the ZSO. When it comes to the park, I did not hear that anyone was talking about it in terms of solving this issue in some package, and all the insinuations and all calculations, including those in the media, are the consequences of this space where in fact there is no agreement,” said Maric.
When we asked whether this means that the so-called original EU plan on revitalization of the Mitrovica bridge in three phases, and now the draft reconstruction of the bridge without the Peace Park, with two roundabouts on each side of the bridge – was not negotiated with the Serbian or the Pristina side, Maric acknowledged that the EU at the talks in Brussels last year unveiled a plan in connection with the bridge and that it was discussed in May this year, but that there is no agreement, and that the main Mitrovica bridge was not a point of the Brussels Agreement.
