Spain: Next EU-Balkan summit will include both Serbia and Kosovo

Spain's Miguel Angel Moratinos spoke two days after Serbia boycotted a regional conference in Brdo, Slovenia, because Kosovo was invited there as an independent state.

"I think we will succeed to have everybody on board, respecting every sensitivity (and) the international legality," Moratinos said in Brussels on the margins of a meeting with EU counterparts.

The Spanish presidency of the EU is planning to hold a high level meeting with Balkan leaders in Sarajevo in late May or early June. "We still have to fix the final date," Moratinos said.

Serbia is only prepared to sit alongside Kosovo when it is characterized as a territory run by the United Nations office that is still formally responsible for the province despite the fact that it declared its independence two years ago. But in Brdo the compromise arrangement was rejected by Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, leading Serbian President Boris Tadic to cancel his attendance.

The EU's president, Herman Van Rompuy, and Moratinos himself also skipped the event, leaving enlargement commissioner Stefan Fule as the only representative of the bloc.
Moratinos gave no details as to how he plans to overcome the organizational difficulties deriving from the Serbia-Kosovo spat.

He is also likely to have an uneasy time in dealing with Kosovo's representatives, as Spain is one of only five EU countries that has not recognized the territory as a separate nation state.

Kosovo's secession from Serbia remains a subject of international controversy, as only 65 out of 192 UN member states have formally recognized it.