Troika meets with Belgrade at opening of two-day London talks
The Contact Group’s mediating troika will meet with the Belgrade delegation on Tuesday evening at the opening of the two-day talks in London, which aim is to prepare the agenda and proceedings for the first direct talks scheduled for September 28 in New York.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Pristina delegation will meet with the EU-Russia-US troika on Wednesday morning.
The Belgrade delegation is led by Minister of Kosovo and Metohia Slobodan Samardzic and Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic, while the Pristina team is headed by Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu and Prime Minister Agim Ceku.
The meetings are expected to sum up the results of the Vienna talks held on August 30 and to resolve open procedural questions related to the holding of direct talks. The precise agenda of the direct talks will be one of the core issues.
Minister Samardzic said that the Belgrade delegation will present a draft agenda for the Sept. 28 direct negotiations. However, he added that no concrete results should be expect at the New York meeting either except a principled resolve to negotiate, because the real negotiations will start in October.
"We expect the troika to hear us out and adopt our proposals" for the agenda, Samardzic said. "We will demand that the Albanian side also unveil its proposals for the talks, not just talk about an abstract program of the status of the province. We expect to get a little closer to the beginning of the process, and we expect the process to run in a normal and expected manner," the minister said.
On the other hand, Kosovo's Albanian leaders said Kosovo was ready to offer Serbia a treaty guaranteeing cordial relations after the breakaway province becomes independent. The treaty will be presented on Wednesday in London to the international troika.
"This will relax our relations and develop good, friendly ties between two sovereign countries," Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu said. Kosovo's PM Agim Ceku said Pristina would not negotiate the province's independence. "We want to talk about issues after independence," Ceku said. "Independence is done."
The Pristina delegation has agreed to direct talks, but refuses to negotiate the status of Kosovo, arguing it had been resolved by the proposal of former U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari on "supervised independence".
The government of Serbia, on the other hand, insists on direct status talks, recalling that the Ahtisaari plan was rejected in the U.N. Security Council in July.
The first round of direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina on the future status of Kosovo is to take place at EU representation office to the U.N. in New York, on Sept. 28.
The day before that, also in New York, the Contact Group members' foreign ministers will hold a meeting, with the participation of the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana.
