Brussels, 05/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - The prime minister of Serbia, Ivica Dacic, said on Tuesday 4 September during his visit to Brussels that there is still no definite date for restarting the dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo but that Serbia is ready to start. He said that the parties must find an agreement on the subjects for discussion but also on the format that the dialogue will be able to take. Dacic added that the possibility of having High Representative of the EU Catherine Ashton as mediator in the dialogue still had to be discussed. He also said that Ashton will discuss the dialogue with the Serbian president, Tomislav Nikolic, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York in mid-September - a meeting which has not yet been confirmed from the European side.
During their meeting Ashton and Dacic insisted on the “need to continue and re-invigorate the dialogue”. The commissioner for enlargement, Stefan Füle, expressed his “strong hope that the dialogue with Pristina would resume soon, creating a new dynamic that will further normalise relations between Serbia and Kosovo”.
Progressing on implementation of agreements. Dacic said that his government would put the agreements in place that were obtained during the dialogue by the previous government, while stressing that there were different interpretations of the agreements and that it is therefore necessary to define what has been decided and what still needs to be done.
Ashton and Füle welcomed the agreement of 2 September between Belgrade and Pristina which will enable Kosovo to take part in international conferences if an asterisk is attached to its name, and if a note in the documentation explains that its diplomatic status is still unresolved. (CG/transl.fl)