Kosovo premier rules out status talks with Belgrade

Jan 23, 2009, 9:31 GMT

Pristina - Kosovo, which declared its split from Serbia 11 months ago, will not negotiate the status of the Serbian minority with Belgrade, Hashim Thaci, the premier of Europe's newest country said Friday.

'We will not discuss it,' Thaci said in an interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. 'It's all old problems.'

Pristina refuses Belgrade's initiative for fresh talks on the status of the Serb minority, although the United Nations, United States and European Union supported the so-called six-point plan that included it.

Belgrade proposed a special status for the Serb minority, making up less than 10 per cent of the 2 million Kosovans, but dominating the northernmost one-quarter of Kosovo.

Kosovo Albanian leaders, representing the 90-per cent majority, worry that a special status for the Serbs would cement the existing ethnic partition and pave the way for the secession of the north.

According to Thaci, the special status would violate Kosovo's constitution, which 'must be in force on the entire territory.'

He also expressed concern over parallel structures of authority that Belgrade endorses in the Serb enclave, and warned that jurisdiction over customs, police and laws must be handed over to the law-enforcing EU mission, deployed to Kosovo in late 2008.

'Illegal paramilitary groups must be disassembled,' he said. 'Belgrade must finally stop attacking us by using compatriots in northern Kosovo.'

On the economy front, Thaci voiced optimism in spite of the 'great financial crisis,' pointing to plans for the construction of a 3.5- billion-euro (4.55 billion dollars) power plant and for the sale of the state-owned mobile operator, Pristina airport and the power grid.