BELGIUM: EU brokers historic Kosovo deal, opening door for EU accession talks with Serbia

Record ID: 858109

  • Title: BELGIUM: EU brokers historic Kosovo deal, opening door for EU accession talks with Serbia
  • Date: 19th April 2013
  • Summary: BRUSSELS, BELGIUM (APRIL 19, 2013) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTION SERVICE (EEAS) BUILDING
  • Embargoed: 4th May 2013 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Belgium
  • City:
  • Country: Belgium
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVABZ5D7050V91AQVN3574VVUQEL
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  • Story Text: Serbia and its former province of Kosovo struck an historic deal on Friday (April 19) to settle their fraught relations, opening the door to European Union membership talks for Belgrade in a milestone for the region's recovery from the collapse of Yugoslavia.
    Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said after the meeting that the agreement would inaugurate a new era of reconciliation.

    "This agreement represents the start of a new era, an era of reconciliation and interstate cooperation. This agreement will help us heal the wounds of the past if we have wisdom and knowledge to implement it in practice," Thaci said.
    The pact tackles the ethnic partition of Kosovo between its Albanian majority and a small Belgrade-backed pocket of some 50,000 Serbs in the north, a schism that has dogged regional stability since Kosovo seceded from Serbia in 2008.
    Under the agreement, the north of Kosovo will be absorbed into the legal framework of the country but retain limited autonomy in areas of health, education, policing and courts.
    The agreement is likely to open the door to greater international integration of the young state, the last to emerge from the ashes of federal Yugoslavia.
    Speaking after putting his signature to the proposal, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said the deal remained subject to approval by 'state bodies' back in Belgrade.

    "After 10 rounds of talks with interim self-rule bodies in Pristina, Catherine Ashton has offered us a final version of the document that the parties will review in the coming days," Dacic said.
    Kosovo became a ward of the United Nations in 1999 when NATO carried out air strikes to halt Serbian forces killing ethnic Albanians, but Belgrade retained de facto control over the northern Serb pocket. The partition has frequently flared into violence and frustrated NATO's hopes of cutting back a costly peace force that still numbers 6,000 soldiers.
    After the talks, EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton, Dacic and Thaci headed to the NATO headquarters on the outskirts of Brussels to discuss security guarantees for Kosovo.
    NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen congratulated Ashton on the agreement and issued a statement saying NATO and its operation in Kosovo, known as KFOR, would stand ready to support the implementation of the agreement.
    It marks a seminal moment in the region's recovery from Yugoslavia's bloody collapse, when some 150,000 people were killed in wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the last decade of the 20th century.
    Serbia hopes it will be enough to win the green light on Monday from the EU's 27 members for the start of talks on Serbian accession to the bloc.
    That process could unlock Serbia's potential as the largest market in the former Yugoslavia and lure much-needed foreign investment to its struggling economy.
    After neighbouring Croatia joins the EU on July 1, anchoring Serbia in accession talks would belatedly help to drive reform and cement stability.
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