PRISTINA (Reuters) – Kosovo will respect its international obligations and implement the measures agreed last week as part of a deal aimed at normalising relations with Serbia, Prime Minister Albin Kurti told lawmakers on Thursday.
Last Saturday, Pristina and Belgrade verbally agreed to implement a Western-backed plan on how to improve ties in the wake of a war in the late 1990s and decades of tense relations. Normalising relations is a condition both Balkan countries must meet to speed up their path to joining the European Union.
“If we want to be treated as a state and be recognised as such, I cannot avoid the obligations from the international treaties that we have agreed,” Kurti told lawmakers as he explained the plan in parliament for the first time.
“I am convinced that it was impossible to reach any better text of the agreement in the situation we are in.”
Under the agreement, Kosovo is committed to give greater autonomy to areas of its country where Serbs are in the majority, while Serbia agreed not to block Kosovo’s membership of international organisations.
The EU pledged to organise a donor conference for both countries, with the disbursement of financial aid dependent on steps to improve ties. It is warning both sides not to cherrypick parts of the deal but to implement it in full.
Kurti has been a critic of previous agreements reached between Kosovo and Serbia, including those that stipulated more autonomy for Serb communities. Serbs account for about 5% of Kosovo’s population of 1.8 million.
The opposition accuses Kurti of accepting what he was against for almost a decade.
Meanwhile, Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic said last week that the “red lines” for Belgrade would be “the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state and Kosovo’s membership in the U.N.”
Serbia is a candidate for the EU membership but to do so it must first normalise relations with Pristina and implement an array of reforms.
The EU’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell, who brokered the deal on Saturday in North Macedonia’s coastal resort of Ohrid, said any attempt to question the agreement would be futile.
“The agreement was agreed, it has to be implemented, and there is no room for picking and choosing,” Borrell said in Brussels.”We will follow closely who is implementing and who is not implementing.”
The EU has already said any party who will not respect the deal will face political isolation and lack of financial support form the wealthy bloc.
Ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo declared independence in 2008 but Serbia is still considers it as its southern province.
(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci in Pristina, Andrew Gray in Brussels and Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade; Editing by Alison Williams)
