Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic said on Tuesday that there is pressure on Serbia to reach an agreement with Pristina this or next year.

However, he said, Belgrade will not barter in terms of Kosovo and Metohija "for the sake of EU membership deadlines."

Dacic told RTS that countries that recognized the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo are wrong when they claim that the process is irreversible.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Monday that he "does not think that key political decisions should be made by the Church."

Vucic also rejected the assessment that the state behaves as if the Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC) was "guilty for the issue of Kosovo and Metohija."

"The Church should not make key political decisions, and it certainly has the right to express its opinion," the president said when asked to comment on daily Blic reporting that "the state blames only the Church for Kosovo."

The EU-Balkan Summit in Sofia, conceived as Thessaloniki 2, is very disappointing because there has been no reaffirmation of the prospects of Balkan countries' membership in the EU, says Toby Vogel, a researcher of the Brussels-based Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS) for Radio Free Europe, daily Blic reports.

Albanians are coming to the municipality of Gracanica on a daily basis to request certificates of citizenship of the Republic of Serbia.

This document is required in order to be issued Serbian ID cards and passports.

This is what Ljubinko Karadzic, president of the Interim Organ of the City of Pristina, located in Gracanica - a Serb enclave near Pristina - told Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti.

Ivica Dacic has told a Council of Europe (CoE) meeting in Elsinore, Denmark that his country would stand up and against any attempt to make Kosovo its member.

Serbia's first deputy PM and foreign minister spoke on Friday at the ministerial meeting - during which Croatia took over from Denmark the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers.

President of Serbia talks to EL PAÍS about the Balkan country’s efforts to join the bloc, and how Kosovo is proving a sticking point

The existential journey that has taken Aleksandar Vučić to this point has been a long one. As a young man, the current president of Serbia was an ultra-nationalist of passionate rhetoric, and later he served as information minister under the dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Since then, Vučić has morphed into a fervent supporter of the European Union, and his mission now is to achieve membership for his country.

Serbia and Kosovo have become refuges for each other’s criminals and fugitives, allowing suspected murderers, drug dealers and organ-traffickers to evade justice by crossing the border.

When the time came for Kosovo doctor Lutfi Dervishi and his son Arban to be imprisoned in 2016 for one of the Balkans’ most gruesome post-war crimes, the pair had vanished.

President Aleksandar Vucic has said in Sofia that he hopes a solution will be reached for Kosovo and Metohija that will be acceptable to citizens of Serbia.

As he said, he will do his best and fight to make it happen.

"I want to believe that Serbia will have enough strength in the upcoming period, if there is a willingness to compromise on the other side, to come up with a solution that will be acceptable to its citizens, as far as Kosovo and Metohija is concerned."

In any case, we will do our best and we will fight for that, Vucic told reporters.

There is no Western plan for Kosovo, no coordinated proposal by the members of the Quint and no 11-point plan, US Ambassador to Serbia Kyle Scott told Belgrade-based daily Blic today.

According to Blic, claims have appeared in the public about the countries of the so-called Quint – the US, Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy – adopted a developed plan to pressure and blackmail Serbia in order to achieve full independence for Kosovo and separate Serbia from Russia.

The western international community should think about division of Kosovo as least bad solution, treating it as a unique case, Centre for Euro-Atlantic Studies (CEAS) Director, Jelena Milic said, Serbian media reported.

Milic told Tanjug news agency if the West is that much afraid of Russian influence, then unresolved Belgrade-Pristina issue “is one of the great channels of influence Russia could use.”

She also added, she expected that once Serbia signed Brussels agreement, EU and NATO members state that have not recognized Kosovo, would do so, however it did not happen.