Dacic and Taci to talk institutions and officers

The prime ministers of Serbia and Kosovo, Ivica Dacic and Hasim Taci will first meet with Ashton separately, and then have a working lunch together, after which the talks will formally begin, Tanjug has learned at the European Commission. An EC official who wanted to remain anonymous said it was highly likely the talks would roll over into Wednesday due to the complexity of the issues on the agenda. This will be the toughest round yet, he said. Belgrade and Pristina had previously announced that this round will focus primarily on the issue of institutions in northern Kosovo which Pristina refers to as parallel - the courts, tax administration and security structures. "We are going to Brussels to talk about the functioning of institutions, which means that on one hand, the talks will address the issue of parallel institutions and on the other, the specific position of Serbs, as Catherine Ashton defines it, i.e. what would constitute autonomy there, i.e. a community of Serb municipalities," Dacic explained. Kosovo's Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuci said that Taci would demand the establishment of a municipal court in Northern Mitrovica, which the local Serbs oppose. The mixed-team court supervised by EULEX has been closed for five years, ever since demonstrators stopped judges and prosecutors from entering the court house. The second topic of the dialogue are Serbian security structures in Kosovo, meaning the police and secret services which Pristina claims are active in the north and must withdraw. In a statement on Sunday, Dacic veered from Belgrade's official position that these structures do not exist in Kosovo for the first time by saying it was the Kosovo Serbs themselves that reported on the presence of the Serbian Interior Ministry to Pristina. The two sides are also expected to finalize an agreement on the exchange of liaison officers which was reached in principle during the previous round in January.