Slovakia voted against Kosovo’s UNESCO bid because Belgrade and Pristina are expected to table such proposals in mutual agreement. According to the Beta agency, this is what Slovakian Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said in the wake of the UNESCO General Conference vote where Pristina’s bid to join the organization failed on Monday.
Lajcak also noted that “Pristina and Belgrade should behave as the Czech Republic and Slovakia once did. “We want the partners to interpret it as a sort of message that the international community expects them to submit such proposals on the basis of mutual agreement and consent, as the Czech Republic and Slovakia once did,” Lajcak told the TASR agency during a visit to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Slovak minister warned that “complicated and sensitive issues must be addressed in the dialogue on the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina.” “Our interest is to strengthen the dialogue. One of the reasons why we took a negative attitude is that the issue was not the subject of the dialogue and we are afraid it could worsen it,” said Lajcak.
The fact that Slovakia was among the countries that on Monday voted against Kosovo’s admission to UNESCO, according to Lajcak, is in line with the position of Slovakia not to recognize Kosovo, but is not hostile to it. “Slovakia has supported or at least has not hindered integrations. At the same time we are talking about the important role of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue,” said Lajcak.
