Serbia wants EU to abandon plans for mission to Kosovo without UN’s approval
Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic said on Wednesday that it would be best if the EU abandoned plans to send a mission to Kosovo, which would enable “the normal signing and implementation” of the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA).
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Thursday, January 10, 2008
"Serbia is a free and sovereign state and if the EU wants to sign the SAA with Serbia on January 28, it must respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country," Jocic said.
If the EU decided to send a civilian mission to Kosovo, which included police forces, in order to create a puppet state on Serbian territory, that would be an act of disrupting Serbia's territorial integrity and a direct violation and annulment of the initialed agreement, the minister said.
"By unlawfully sending a mission to implement the rejected Ahtisaari plan, the EU would severely violate the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, the Serbian Constitution and Serbia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Jocic said.
Meanwhile, the EU enlargement commissioner's spokeswoman Krisztina Nagy said that the European Commission was "unsettled by the inaccurate interpretation" of the SAA in the ongoing debate in Serbia.
"The SAA is a document whose content was the topic of negotiations between the European Commission and Serbia as equal partners, and it does not predetermine the status of Kosovo. That fact is lost in the current debate," Nagy said, adding that the agreement was "not something that is imposed, but a privilege that brings concrete benefits."
Serbia fiercely opposes an EU proposal to send its mission to Kosovo, without a decision by the UN Security Council. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said the EU would have to choose between signing the SAA with Serbia and sending its civilian mission to Kosovo without UN SC approval.
