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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

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Serbia did not receive official invitation, agenda for negotiations on Kosovo-Metohija status in Vienna

Belgrade, 22 August 2007

Serbian Minister for Kosovo-Metohija Slobodan Samardzic said today that within eight days negotiations on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija will begin and the Serbian side has not yet received any kind of documents, official invitation, not even the agenda for these talks.

Slobodan Samardzic

Author: Tanjug

In a statement to the news agency Tanjug, Samardzic said that this is unusual since the time for beginning of talks is approaching and the Serbian side on August 10 conveyed to the Troika of envoys an organised proposal concerning rules of negotiations and submitted its platform in detail as well as in summary form.

He explained that the Serbian side has not yet formed a negotiations team, because it is still unknown what the subject, form and manner for conducting talks will be.

We still have a few more days to see if will get a response to these questions and following that we will form a delegation and leave for Vienna, said Samardzic.

He stressed that the Serbian side expects at least a written invitation and agenda for the meeting, besides it has also been announced that talks will not be direct rather will be conducted in two rooms.

We still must know the subject, framework and agenda for these talks, said Samardzic and added that it can hardly be expected that talks will be well conducted if we do not have clear principles and rules for negotiations.

Commenting on today’s visit by member of the troika EU Representative Wolfgang Ischinger and Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amada to the province, Samardzic said that it is good that they are holding talks with Kosovo Albanians, who perhaps have a problem with the subject and manner of negotiations.

They should try to convince the Kosovo Albanians to join this process sincerely. That is very important since we cannot expect negotiations to yield result if we do not know at the beginning what we are going to talk about, said Samardzic.

He said that even before the beginning of official negotiations, the international community is speculating about the results, which disturbs the negotiations process. He gave the example of yesterday’s statement by Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the US State Department Nicholas Burns that Kosovo-Metohija will be independent.