Kosovo Serbs reject Belgrade's agreements with Pristina

Nov 17, 2011, 15:08 GMT

Belgrade - Serbs in volatile northern Kosovo said Thursday that they will not implement any of the agreements from talks the European Union brokered between Serbia and Kosovo.

The Serbs in northern Kosovo have been blocking all traffic in their enclave since September, preventing the implementation of a deal Serbia and Kosovo reached on their contested border.

While the Serbs in the north of the mostly Albanian Kosovo insist that their enclave is Serbian soil, by prolonging the crisis they undermined Belgrade's position - possibly hurting its ambition to be recognized as a membership candidate at an EU summit on December 9 in Brussels.

Serbia was told that to become a candidate at the EU summit next month, it must resolve the crisis in northern Kosovo.

Further, it must not only return to the talks it left in September amid problems in the north, but also implement the agreements made in the six rounds of talks the EU facilitated since March.

At a meeting with Belgrade's chief negotiator, Borislav Stefanovic, on Thursday in Belgrade, leaders from the Serb enclave insisted that they will not implement the agreements.

The outcome casts doubts on Stefanovic's statement a day before that the talks with Kosovo were set to resume on Monday.

Following Stefanovic's remarks, a spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Michael Mann, said in Brussels that he did not have a 'confirmation' of the Monday date.

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