Kosovo doesn’t expect agreement from Monday’s meeting (Koha Ditore)

Pristina and Belgrade are far from approximating positions on the umbrella mechanism for municipalities with Serb majority. Kosovo authorities don’t expect that the meeting in Brussels on Monday with Serbian representatives will result in an agreement for the umbrella mechanism.

A senior official, who is part of Kosovo’s negotiating team, told the paper, “we are going there without expecting an agreement, because the Serbian side continues to insist on executive competencies for the association of Serb municipalities, and we cannot agree with this. Our partners, the United States of America and the European Union, do not want such a solution. In reality, we don’t expect Serbia to respond to the pressure to withdraw from this point … We have reached a critical point and everything that has been achieved so far can go down the drain and dialogue will practically fail.”

Dacic to visit Putin over Kosovo (Kosova Sot)

Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic will visit Russia in early April and meet President Vladimir Putin to discuss the outcome of political dialogue with Kosovo’s Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi. Dacic will meet Putin on the eve of the seventh round of talks with Thaçi. Belgrade-based Blic daily newspaper quoted sources as saying that Dacic will listen to Putin’s assessment of the course of dialogue with Pristina.

Deda: Association of Serb municipalities is not an NGO (Zëri)

Ilir Deda, director of the Pristina-based KIPRED research institute, told Radio Free Europe that through the association of Serb municipalities Kosovo risks creating a third tier of government. “It is clear that the government in Pristina does not know what the association will be. Will it be an association of the northern municipalities or an association of Serb municipalities in all of Kosovo? Then we also heard that this association will have the status of an NGO. This immediately raises several questions: why should there be talks with Belgrade in Brussels about an NGO? Why should one ask for assistance from the U.S. for an NGO not to have executive competencies? The third question is why is the law on local governance and inter-municipal cooperation not the law on NGOs applicable for this NGO?” Deda was quoted as saying.

PDK mayors “sui generis” ! (Zëri)

Mayors of five municipalities, members of the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), have problems with the law. Some of them were even sentenced but they failed to respect the decisions of the judiciary. Opposition representatives and political analysts argue that this is evidence of PDK’s influence over judicial mechanisms.