Serbia and Kosovo to resume talks under EU wing

Aug 8, 2011, 19:09 GMT

Belgrade - Serbia and its former province Kosovo will resume stalled talks on September 5, Belgrade's chief negotiator Borislav Stefanovic told the national television RTS on Monday.

The talks, facilitated by the European Union since March, were broken off in July when Serbia refused to allow Kosovo goods across its borders.

That triggered a trade embargo by the mostly ethnic Albanian Kosovo. That escalated into violence when Pristina authorities attempted to seize border crossings in the ethnic Serb-dominated north in late July.

Local Serbs erected barricades in the area and are expected to remove it after their leaders endorse an agreement that NATO brokered between Belgrade and Pristina to defuse the dangerous tension.

Stefanovic said he was expecting the problem over trade, with Belgrade's refusal to recognize Kosovo's custom authorities, to be resolved.

Kosovo, once a Serbian province, declared independence in 2008, nine years after NATO ousted Belgrade's security forces from the region to end a crackdown on the majority ethnic Albanian population.

Belgrade vowed never to recognize Kosovo as a country and is encouraging Serbs in their northern enclave to resist Pristina's rule.

But President Boris Tadic is hoping to restore the fragile stability and resume talks, because a normalization of the situation in Kosovo is a condition for Serbia to gain recognition as an EU membership candidate.

So far five rounds of talks have been completed, but the sixth was first delayed until September because of the trade row, then threatened by the volatility in Kosovo.

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