The founder of the Humanitarian Law Center, Natasa Kandic, called on Kosovo President Hashim Thaci to allow Serbs from Djakovica to visit the church this year.

"On this occasion, please personally engage so that the Serbs from Djakovica on August 28, 2018, visit the church and their homes and them not to be exposed to humiliation as the previous year," said Kandic in an open letter published in the Belgrade based daily Danas.

Serbian media reported yesterday that Albania would be hosting an informal meeting of the heads of the Western Balkan governments, citing a statement of the Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama's cabinet.

The cabinet's statement reads that the topic of the meeting will be "regional economic integration", the development of a common vision for EU accession, implementation of the regional economic zone and other issues.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will be in Belgrade for Serbia’s grand military parade on the occasion of the centennial of the victory in the First World War, the Vecernje Novosti daily confirmed on Friday.

This will be Putin’s second visit to Serbia after he attended a previous military parade in honour of the liberation of Belgrade in WWII, in October 2014.

The Mayor of the Presevo municipality, a part of Serbia’s southern region of Presevo Valley, said late on Thursday that his fellow ethnic Albanians were against the exchanges of territories with Kosovo, “even if that means we will stay where we are now,” the Beta news agency reported.

Sqiprim Arifi said that Presevo Valley ethnic Albanians “want a strong Kosovo, and its north (with a Serb majority) even if the price we have to pay is to remain under (the control of) Serbia.”

The European Commission reiterated on Tuesday that Belgrade and Pristina should define a lasting solution that would be sustainable, realistic and in line with the international law, the Beta news agency reported.

Two senior Serbian officials on Tuesday criticized official Belgrade for not doing enough to solve crimes committed against Kosovo Serbs.

Commission for Missing Persons chief Veljko Odalovic told the “Unpunished Crimes” gathering that the authorities in Belgrade had “taken part in events which were not good for the state”. There are no inmates convicted of war crimes in Serbian prisons, they have been freed or pardoned, he said.

Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday that "the whole western world, with exceptions, considers Kosovo as a whole, sovereign, and indivisible territory," Serbian media reports today.

This was the Serbian president's reaction to German Chancellor Angela Merkel saying a day earlier she was "against changing borders in the Balkans."

"She already did delimitation between us -  by separating the whole of Kosovo from Serbia," Vucic said, and the concept of "delimitation" with the Albanians that he has been advocating for recently.

Serbs in Kosovo agree with the idea of a division of Kosovo only if the arrangement would guarantee them more freedom and more rights than they had so far, said the Vice-President of Kosovo’s Serb List, Igor Simic.

He added that the Serb List, a political group of Serbs in Kosovo, trusts Belgrade’s negotiation team unequivocally.

Simic told Serbia’s public broadcaster, RTS, that Serbs in Kosovo live in suspense for decades already.

The presidents of Serbia and Kosovo are main advocates of the separation between Pristina and Belgrade, Shkëlzen Maliqi, Kosovo ’s political analyst tells the Belgrade Danas daily on Monday, warning about possible effects on Bosnia.

Speaking about the deals between Aleksandar Vucic and Hashim Thaci and about a final stage of the Belgrade – Pristina dialogue, Maliqi, also a philosopher and an art critic, said it was interesting to what extent the two had similar stands.

A Kosovo Serb leader told N1 that President Aleksandar Vucic’s statement that he favoured the separation with the Albanians in Kosovo, was yet another message “that spreads depression among the Kosovo Serbs.”

Momcilo Trajkovic, a member of the Serb National Forum Presidency, and former Serbia’s Deputy Prime Minister, said that previous Vucic’s statements also contributed to Kosovo Serbs’ state of mind.