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Negotiators discuss rights of municipalities to additional jurisdictions

Belgrade/Vienna, 7 September 2006

Coordinator of the Serbian negotiating team and Serbian Prime Minister’s advisor Slobodan Samardzic said that the biggest disagreement in today’s negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina authorities was due to connections of Serb municipalities in the province with Belgrade.

Slobodan Samardzic

Samardzic said that the negotiators first discussed rights of municipalities to additional jurisdictions, after which the focus moved to individual jurisdictions and functions of municipalities.

The ethnic Albanian delegation tried to move the talks back to square one, especially in the case of connections of Kosovo municipalities with Belgrade, said Samardzic noting that these issues had been established before, though not agreed upon.

Samardzic said that his feeling is that for the first time since the negotiations began, representatives of Belgrade and Pristina have had talked openly on the issues they disagree on, which is a step forward.

By making vague formulations, the ethnic Albanians try to reach a proposal that will be generalised and unclear and which would be implemented as they wish. Their aim is to turn all decisions made by Belgrade and Serbian municipalities concerning cooperation into a subject of their political arbitration. We did not accept that and demonstrated with arguments that this cannot be accepted and that it is not good for the development of relations in Kosovo-Metohija, Samardzic said.

The negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina on technical issues will continue tomorrow in Vienna by talks on the protection of religious and cultural heritage, human rights and protection of ethnic communities in Kosovo. The negotiations on decentralisation will be continued on September 15 with talks on new municipalities and their borders.