The Management Team for the establishment of the Association/Community of Serbian Municipalities, performs its task of preparation of the Statute of the ZSO in line with its mandate, entrusted through the Brussels agreements and the draft text will be presented, as it was foreseen, in Brussels, to the implementation boards of Belgrade and Pristina, and then within the high-level dialogue, press release of the Management Team reads.

The statement further points out that the draft statute was not, as some media claimed, submitted to the government in Pristina. Only the report on the work of the Team thus far was sent to the Government of Kosovo, that was regularly informed on the dynamics of activities through the competent Ministry of Local Government Administration, reports Serbian media based in Kosovo.

''In our work until now we had discussions with a number of expert groups, representatives of local self-governments, as well as competent ministries, and as an expert body, with a clearly defined mandate and authority, we consider that any attempt to politicize our activities is counterproductive and harms the dialogue process between Belgrade and Pristina,'' concludes the statement of the Management Team delivered to the media.

Pristina based daily Zeri yesterday reported on its front page that that the draft statute of the ZSO was submitted to the Kosovo government, and its provisions violated the Constitution of Kosovo. Kosovo government officials were quoted as saying that the version of the draft Statute was 'unlawful' and 'unconstitutional' and would therefore be rejected.