U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden tried to further improve ties with Serbia and pushed for progress in the country’s relations with the breakaway province Kosovo, one of the key conditions on the Balkan state’s path to joining the European Union.
On a visit to Belgrade, Biden said the U.S. and Serbia had agreed on a new extradition treaty and discussed how to move forward in EU-facilitated discussions over Kosovo, whose independence isn’t recognized by the government in Belgrade. In a meeting with Serbian Premier Aleksandar Vucic, the two discussed upholding stability in southeastern Europe, a region that witnessed the continent’s worst violence since World War II with the bloody disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.
Serbia’s relations with the U.S. have been strained due to a lack of progress in apprehending the killers of three American-Albanians from Kosovo, the Bytyqi brothers, after U.S.-led NATO forces pushed Serbian troops out of the province in a 1999 bombing campaign. The U.S. is also seeking the perpetrators who demolished the U.S. embassy building in central Belgrade in February 2008, when protesters attacked embassies of countries that recognized Kosovo’s independence…
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-16/biden-visits-serbia-to-talk-security-as-vucic-keeps-russian-ties
