Conjufca: Association together with recognition, key to the progress of dialogue

2023-09-20 15:19:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Conjufca: Association together with recognition, key to the progress of dialogue

The Speaker of the Assembly of Kosovo, Glauk Konjufca

The Speaker of the Assembly of Kosovo, Glauk Konjufca, said that the original idea of ??the Agreement towards the normalization of relations was that there could be no establishment of the Association of municipalities with a Serbian majority without mutual recognition.

"Only one key is possible to move the dialogue forward, the Association together with the recognition, otherwise there is no advancement of the dialogue, it is a problem", he told the media in Pristina, adding that it is the responsibility of Kosovo to find the form that the Association to be in accordance with the Constitution and not to violate the legal order.

According to Konjufca, Serbia's position is that Kosovo should establish an Association of municipalities with a Serbian majority "outside any political umbrella of the process that has reached this point where we are now".

He said that the experts who drafted the Annex for the implementation of the Agreement towards the normalization of Kosovo-Serbia relations have expanded the umbrella, as he also commented on the statements of the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, who said that the mediator of the dialogue, Miroslav Lajçak, has been "positioned" against Kosovo.

"The expansion of the umbrella is for there to be [mutual] recognition and Association." Now Lajçak is saying that only the Association is there. Recognition belongs to Serbia when it wants, that means this is Serbia's position. If Lajcak articulates this and says that this is the position of the EU, then we can say that [EU envoy for dialogue, Miroslav] Lajcak contributed to this official position of the EU being the one that represents Serbia", said Konjufca.

Konjufca said that the statements of Kurti, who said that Lajcak is a one-sided mediator, cannot be called accusations, as the European Union described them.

"First of all, I don't think they were accusations. There were some findings of Lajçak's way of working. It has been noticed, to be honest, right from the beginning that Laj?ak's positions which he articulates are more, let's say, taking Serbia's position first, and then efforts through various mechanisms and formulations that he is calm in the solutions that proposes that they can be the starting point of Serbia's position, how it can accommodate Serbia's positioning in the most appropriate way", he said.

On September 18, Kurti said that during the last round of dialogue – held in Brussels on September 14 – there appeared to be coordination between Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vucic, and Lajcak to create, as he put it, an "alternative scenario, where half of the agreement is implemented".

He said that in this meeting, where the Kosovar Prime Minister presented a plan for the implementation of the Agreement towards normalization that he said was rejected by the EU and Serbia, Lajcak "positioned himself" against Kosovo.

The European Union has described Kurti's statements about Lajcak as "baseless accusations", while the United States has expressed its support for the EU as a facilitator of the dialogue process, which started in 2011./ REL