• What does agreement with Serbia on license plates contain? (RTK)
• “Settlement on license plates reached, but no final deal” (Euronews.al)
• Stano: Negotiations to solve crisis in the north to continue (media)
• Talks on the license plates to continue, sources say (Radio Free Europe)
• Serbia withdraws armored vehicles from Kosovo border (Euronews.al)
• Protesters and Police maintain uneasy stand-off at Kosovo border (BIRN)
• Kosovo PM Kurti interview with HRT (media)
• Serbia helping Russia create trouble in the Balkans, Serwer says (Express)
• Visions of the dialogue (II) (Kosovo 2.0)
• PDK: Government to immediately approve U.S.-funded gas project (media)
• Kosovo FM Gervalla meets EC President von der Leyen (media)
• COVID-19: Two deaths, 66 new cases (media)

What does agreement with Serbia on license plates contain? (RTK)

Kosovo Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi spoke after the meetings he had on Wednesday in Brussels in order to deescalate the situation in the north. Bislimi said that a final draft on the license plates has been reached and the same is expected to be approved by the Serbian side, before the agreement can be called final.

Bislimi said that from Monday, Kosovo and Serbia have agreed to advance in the use of stickers instead of changing the license plates.

This, Bislimi said is temporary until a permanent solution for free movement is reached. The third point of the agreement that Kosovo has agreed on, is the removal of barricades and the replacement of the Kosovo Police with KFOR.

"We had several meetings, all were bilateral, with Mr. Lajcak, who then mediated between the parties. The goal for us has been clear to achieve de-escalation and maintain reciprocity with license plates. So far, we have reached a final draft, which has been almost completely agreed. Only the Serbian side is left to give a final agreement. The agreement foresees three elements. The first, from Monday, both Kosovo and Serbia to advance in the use of stickers instead of changing the license plates, which was our goal to have equal treatment. It is temporary and a working group will be formed to find a permanent solution for free movement of vehicles within six months. The third point has to do with the de-escalation of the situation, the removal of barricades from the two border points in Jarinje and Brnjak. According to this agreement, on Saturday, KFOR will be deployed at the points up there, and after a few hours the Special Police will be replaced, which in parallel with the barricades will leave the border points," he said.

Bislimi stated that the only point where Serbia did not give its consent, before the agreement is called finalized, has to do with KM license plates.

"The only point where Serbia has not yet given its consent before the agreement is called finalized is the cars with KM (license plates) for which they think stickers should not be applied. This is absurd because they are illegal signs and we cannot sign agreements where the illegal owners of the license plates are favored, so they would have the same system as long as they moved to the north, while in the south they would be confiscated," Bislimi said.

“Settlement on license plates reached, but no final deal” (Euronews.al)

Kosovo and Serbia found common ground on the license plates disputes, but a final agreement has not been reached, yet.

It was Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi who announced the development following a meeting with Serbian representatives in Brussels. He added that it is up to Belgrade to give the green light.

In principle, the agreement has three main elements:

From Monday, Kosovo and Serbia start using stickers instead of provisional license plates (temporary solution)

Establishment of a working group tasked to find a permanent solution for free movement within 6 months

Easing tensions, removing barricades near Jarinje and Bernjak border points

“Of course, we would prefer not to have any barriers at all, so that both countries recognize the plates of other countries. But this will be the objective of a working group that we’ll establish soon and start working from October 21. We agreed on all points”, he said.

Bislimi explained that the Serbian side had asked not to cover the license plates of Kosovo’s Serbs with the acronym KM, which stands for Kosovo’s Mitrovica. But these plates are deemed illegal by Prishtina.

‘We cannot accept an agreement where the illegal owners of the license plates are being favored’, stressed Bislimi.

Serbia doesn’t recognize Kosovo as an independent state, as a result, it doesn’t recognize the acronym RKS (Republic of Kosovo) on its official plates. In 2011, Prishtina and Belgrade agreed that vehicles from Kosovo would place temporary license plates when crossing to Serbia, while Kosovo saw to hide Serbian plates with a sticker.

After being revised in 2016, the agreement was supposed to terminate this September 15. After this date, the government of Kosovo applied reciprocity, which meant that vehicles with Serbian plates would have to place temporary plates when entering Kosovo.

Stano: Negotiations to solve crisis in the north to continue (media)

European Union spokesman Peter Stano spoke about the meeting of the chief negotiators of Kosovo Besnik Bislimi and that of Serbia Petar Petkovic today in Brussels, mediated by the European Union.

“Dialogue: Meeting of Kosovo & Serbia chief negotiators facilitated by EUSR @MiroslavLajcak in Brussels not over, negotiations continue to find a solution for the current crisis in the north of Kosovo,” Stano wrote on his Twitter account.

Stano’s post was later retweeted by the US Embassy in Kosovo Chargé d'Affaires Nicholas J. Giacobbe, Jr, who wrote that “despite media reports, negotiations in Brussels continue. Progress has been made, but work remains. We encourage Kosovo and Serbia to continue to engage openly and seriously.”

Talks on the license plates to continue, sources say (Radio Free Europe)

The news website reports that although Kosovo’s chief negotiator for dialogue with Serbia, Besnik Bislimi, returned to Kosovo on Wednesday, sources in the European Union are saying that talks between the two delegations will continue on Thursday and that despite progress on the issue an agreement has yet to be reached.

The Serbian delegation reportedly did not accept the text of the final agreement and that this is why the talks will continue today. The same sources said that talks will be held with the Kosovar side too and told that Kosovo negotiators have returned to Prishtina, the EU sources said that “technology allows us to talk even with those that are not physically present in Brussels”.

Serbia withdraws armored vehicles from Kosovo border (Euronews.al)

Serbia is withdrawing all its armored vehicles placed for several days at the border with Kosovo, Serbian media report.

Four armored vehicles, respectively two ‘Lazar’ and two ‘Milosh’ were parked at a two-kilometer distance from Jarinje, reports local media N1.

Tensions rose between the two countries even further after the Serbian army brought several military vehicles, as well as aircraft, near the border with Kosovo, following a decision of the Kurti government to start enforcing an agreement related to the reciprocity of license plates.

The international community has urged Kosovo and Serbia to lower the tensions in the north.

The dialogue resumed today in Brussels on a technical level.

The EU’s Special Envoy at the dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak gave a few details on the agenda of the meetings, while the main theme will be to find a solution to the current crisis.

Protesters and Police maintain uneasy stand-off at Kosovo border (BIRN)

The mood in northern Kosovo remains tense as Serbs keep blockading roads to the border in protest against the new regulations imposed on Serbian vehicles while Kosovo police special forces units maintain an armed presence nearby.

It’s 11.30 on Tuesday morning near Kosovo’s northern border crossing point in Jarinje and members of the country’s police special forces units are ready to begin their 12-hour shift.

The special force’s officers who have just ended their shift experienced a calm but cold night in the valley since they took over the night before. But heavy rain made their three-kilometre walk past a series of roadblocks set up by protesting Kosovo Serbs more difficult. As they approached the blockades, the protesters silently made way for them to pass.

The officers spent the night in their armoured vehicles or in an old container installed not more than a kilometre from the crossing point.

“Have a nice day,” one officer tells his colleague as they hand over.

Jarinje and another crossing point between Kosovo and Serbia, Bernjak, have been blocked for ten days now by Kosovo Serbs protesting against new regulations forcing them to change their Serbian vehicle registration plates to temporary Kosovo ones when entering the country, as Kosovo drivers have had to do for years when entering Serbia.

On the day the measure was imposed, September 20, local Serbs obstructed the roads with dozens of trucks. Around 70 trucks have been parked in the middle of the road in six different places near Jarinje, some 90 kilometres north of the capital Pristina.

Most of the trucks belong to publicly-owned enterprises in Kosovo’s Serb-dominated northern municipalities. A few of them have nothing to do with the protest, and were just unlucky to be there and get caught up by it when the roadblocks went up. Now their drivers are desperately waiting for it all to end so they can continue on their way.

The Kosovo authorities argue that the special police units are keeping the crossing point up and running for pedestrians and vehicles whose drivers are willing to use the temporary Kosovo licence plates.

But Serbia’s government sees the armed units as a provocation to ordinary people living in this Serb-dominated area which has often been a flashpoint for incidents over the past two decades.

Only few metres and dozens of trucks separate the armed police from the Serb protesters who are working in shifts too. At around 10 in the morning, people arrive to relieve those who have spent the night in three tents that the protesters have set up across the road. But others also come and go during the day.

The protesters have been supplied with wood for heating and to barbecue food while observing the situation. From a chimney in one of their tents, white smoke rises upwards as those people try to beat the cold.

They conquer the boredom of their routine by chatting to each other but suddenly fall silent when a stranger or a journalist passes by. None of the protesters agreed to talk to BIRN for this article.

The blocking of the crossing point means that bus passengers have to get out at the border and walk for several kilometres until they get to the last barricade.

In the stillness of the day, only the sound of the wheels of the passengers’ suitcases rolling along the asphalt breaks the silence.

Deadlock unbroken

Serbia does not recognise Kosovo as an independent state and European Union-mediated talks aimed at ‘normalising’ relations between the two have dragged on for years with little real progress on the ground, as the licence plate dispute has highlighted again.

License plates have been a bone of contention ever since the 1998-99 Kosovo war, which ended a NATO’s bombing campaign compelled Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s army and police forces to withdraw, leaving majority-Albanian Kosovo a ward of the United Nations until 2008.

But even though Serbia was no longer in control of the whole of Kosovo, it continued operating a parallel administrative system for Kosovo Serbs, including thousands in northern Kosovo who have continued to use Serbian-issued license plates, which begin with the abbreviated names of Kosovo cities, rather than the plates issued by the authorities in Pristina.

In 2011, three years after Kosovo declared independence, Kosovo and Serbia reached an agreement under which Kosovo authorities would issue license plates marked ‘RKS’ and – in a concession to Serbia’s refusal to recognise its former province as a state – ‘KS’, denoting simply ‘Kosovo’.

The ‘status-neutral’ KS plates were issued first by the UN administration mission in Kosovo, UNMIK. The move was aimed at encouraging Serbs in the north to start using Kosovo-issued plates, but many did not bother and kept on using Serbian plates instead.

In 2016, Kosovo extended the validity of the KS plates for another five years. When this measure expired on September 15, Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s government decided against extending it and announced that it would also require the removal of Serbian-issued plates at the border and their replacement with temporary Kosovo plates.

Serbia, for its part, does not recognise the RKS plates and requires drivers to remove them at the border and pay for temporary Serbian plates.

As the blockade of the border crossings continued this week, the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, KFOR, stepped in to offer a solution, but this was reportedly refused by the mayors of four Serb-majority northern municipalities.

Media in Kosovo reported that a proposal made by KFOR’s commander, General Franco Federici, would have seen protesters unblock the roads and special police units withdraw from the north, with KFOR soldiers taking over the crossing points.

But the mayors of Mitrovica North, Zvecan, Leposavic and Zubin Potok insisted that the Kosovo government should also withdraw the decision on licence plates.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the four Serb mayors insisted that the decision “endangers freedom of movement”.

“In consultation with our citizens, we unanimously rejected the [KFOR] proposal. Our people and we as their representatives are not ready to agree with Pristina’s intention to put us in a ghetto,” they said.

Kosovo’s Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla said the Pristina authorities had accepted the offer.

“Given that KFOR has offered additional engagements and has offered to protect our border police with additional forces at the border crossing points, we have stated that the presence of the special units would be unnecessary upon the removal of the barricades,” Svecla said on Tuesday.

KFOR has shown a visible presence in the area in an attempt to maintain calm. On Tuesday, four Polish KFOR soldiers twice patrolled through the blockades and the Kosovo police checkpoint.

The dispute was on the table on Wednesday morning at a meeting between delegations from Kosovo and Serbia in Brussels as part of the European Union-facilitated dialogue.

“This morning, I had two separate meetings with the chief negotiators of Kosovo and Serbia to discuss ways to solve the current crisis,” EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak wrote on Twitter. “We will continue our discussions throughout the day.”

Kosovo PM Kurti interview with HRT (media)

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti in an interview with Croatian TV station HRT on Wednesday was asked to comment on the current situation in the north of Kosovo and said that Serbia and not Kosovo is the problem. “Especially the president of that country [Serbia] who thinks and talks like in the 1990s. The border crossing points of Jarinje and Bernjak are in crisis not because of the Serbs but because of the President of Serbia,” he said.

Kurti said that to date over 11,000 vehicles from Serbia took the provisional license plates of Kosovo without any problems. “They cooperated with our police and institutions,” he added.

According to Kurti, people at the roadblocks in the north are paid by Serbia. “Some of them even have criminal activities in the past; they have extremist opinions about politics and the world. Some of them were also part of attempts for the coup d’etat in Montenegro five years ago,” he said.

Asked if he thinks that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic wants to provoke an international conflict, Kurti said: “they brought the Minister of Defense at the border with Kosovo, together with the Russian ambassador and the Defense Attaché of the Russian Federation in Belgrade. On the same day, they burned a building in Zubin Potok. MiG-29 are seen flying over Kosovo, so far helicopters and there are movement of armored vehicles produced by Russia … So they came with a military arsenal to the borders of our country.”

Serbia helping Russia create trouble in the Balkans, Serwer says (Express)

Daniel Serwer, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and expert on the Balkans, said in an interview with Gazeta Express on Wednesday that Kosovo’s reciprocity on vehicle plates with Serbia is the right principle, but that its implementation needs to be successful. “I think reciprocity is the right principle, but implementation needs to be successful. It is not yet clear whether it will be,” he said.

Serwer said Washington and Brussels must accept the reality that Serbia is becoming a puppet helping Russia to create trouble in the Balkans. “Serbia is becoming a willing puppet helping Russia to make trouble in the Balkans. It is no longer sitting on two chairs but only on the anti-democratic one. Washington and Brussels need to accept this reality,” he said.

Serwer also argued that internationals must react to Serbia’s military show of strength at the border with Kosovo. “The EU and US should be telling Serbia that the military show of strength is unacceptable, and that NATO will not only defend the territorial integrity of Kosovo but will also be prepared to limit cooperation with Serbia if it continues to pose any military threat to its neighbours,” he added.

Asked to comment on the meeting between Kosovo and Serbia chief negotiators on Wednesday, Serwer said that the involvement of the United States in the process can be useful. “The US can be helpful I think, but I’ll leave it to my diplomat colleagues to decide on the question of direct involvement. The downside is that it will create pressure from the Serbian side for Russian involvement. That would be a bad idea,” he said.

Visions of the dialogue (II) (Kosovo 2.0)

The view from the media.

Dialogue. For anyone in Kosovo, as well as perhaps in Serbia, the word conveys a very specific meaning. For the last decade there has been one never ending dialogue, the dialogue. That is, of course, the Brussels dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, or as it is formally known, the EU-facilitated dialogue between Belgrade and Prishtina.

Before high-level discussions resume, K2.0 is bringing you informed conversations from people with unique and varied perspectives on the dialogue. The conversations took place in early to mid-September, prior to the latest reignition of tensions in Kosovo’s north.

This is the second set of interviews in a series of three. In the first set, we heard the view from Brussels, speaking with the EU rapporteurs to Kosovo and Serbia, Viola von Cramon and Vladimír Bilčík. Now we hear from two local reporters who have been working to keep the public informed about the latest developments in the dialogue.

Gjeraqina Tuhina is a Kosovar journalist covering the European Union and the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia. Currently based in Brussels, she works as a correspondent for RTK, Kosovo’s public television station.

Dario Hajrić is a Serbian journalist who writes analyses and commentary for publications such as Deutsche Welle, Remarker and Kosovo 2.0. He is also a frequent commentator for the cable news channel N1.

K2.0: Where would you say the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia stands now? Would you label the process so far as a success?

Gjeraqina Tuhina: The process and its future is very unclear at this moment, especially now that Brussels has different interlocutors from Prishtina. It was always an open-ended process where the outcome was unclear and parties had different views on how the talks might end.

If we take into account how much Serbia has advanced in the EU accession process, thanks to the dialogue, then indeed it can be qualified as a success. Serbia is considered a frontrunner in the accession talks, even though regular reports from the European Commission present a weak rule of law in the country, a lack of independence in the media sphere and a poor record in the prosecution of war crimes.

However, in the case of Kosovo, the dialogue has not borne much fruit. At first, it exhausted all the state’s administrative capacity, which was already weak. The dialogue has also prevented further recognition of independence.

Serbia has used this process to convince reluctant countries that the dialogue is about the status of Kosovo, and therefore some new recognitions are now pending the conclusion of the process. The letters of apparent derecognition from some states also indicate that those countries are suspending recognition pending the result, which should settle the status of Kosovo. Instead of helping Kosovo, the dialogue was used to deny and even to withdraw recognition.

Dario Hajrić: The dialogue stalled as soon as the U.S. stopped applying pressure to the governments of Serbia and Kosovo last year. The process itself is very ambivalent. On one hand, it is obvious that over the years some progress was made in the institutional sense. On the other hand, there is a painful lack of improvement when it comes to reconciliation, which should lay the groundwork for the prospect of lasting peace.

Read full article here: https://bit.ly/3maVzT7

PDK: Government to immediately approve U.S.-funded gas project (media)

The Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) issued a statement calling on the Government of Kosovo to approve without delays the project for construction of gas infrastructure funded by the United States.

“The Democratic Party of Kosovo is following with great concern the hesitancy of the Government of Kosovo regarding the approval of the Compact investment plans of the American agency MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) on the preparatory infrastructure for the gas transmission network, as well as the plans for a natural gas power plant,” the leading opposition party said, adding that at a time when the Kosovo economy has been badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, a grant of USD 200 million pledged by MCC is of immense importance.

Kosovo FM Gervalla meets EC President von der Leyen (media)

Kosovo's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora Donika Gervalla met yesterday the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.

According to a press release issued by the Ministry, the Gervalla and von der Leyen discussed Kosovo's journey towards European Union integration. Gervalla also spoke about the Government's efforts in implementing the European reform agenda and regional cooperation. "Gervalla reaffirmed Kosovo's commitment in the framework of the Berlin Process, underlining that regional cooperation processes have a future only when equal treatment of all Western Balkan countries is guaranteed."

COVID-19: Two deaths, 66 new cases (media)

Two deaths from COVID-19 and 66 new cases with the virus have been confirmed in the last 24 hours in Kosovo. 221 persons recovered from the virus during this time. There are 3,185 active cases with COVID-19 in Kosovo.