Keepin touch

Whether you have a question, comment, suggestion or any problem in the purview of the government, send us your message and we will try to respond as soon as possible. If your problem is not in our purview, we will forward your message to the relevant institution.

The Government of the Republic of Serbia

In the service of citizens

Resolution of Kosovo status, Serbia's Euro-Atlantic integration two separate processes

Belgrade, 18 December 2007

Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Vuk Jeremic and his Bulgarian counterpart Ivaylo Kalfin signed today in Belgrade the Memorandum on cooperation in the field of European integration and the Partnership for Peace.

Author: Tanjug

Jeremic said at a joint press conference with Kalfin that resolution of the future status of Kosovo-Metohija and Serbia's road towards full EU membership are two separate processes that are taking place in the same context, but are not related and cannot be related, nor mutually conditioned.

He said that the upcoming debate on Kosovo-Metohija in the UN Security Council (SC) will be heated, but that it should not be expected that it will result in a common conclusion on the future of the southern Serbian province.

I expect that the debate in the UN SC will be continued next year because of the upcoming holidays and I hope that its conclusion will be that it is necessary to continue dialogue on the Kosovo status, the Serbian Foreign Minister said.

Kalfin said that Serbia's European Integration is a separate issue that is not linked to the future status of Kosovo and underlined that Bulgaria will support Serbia on its road to Europe because all of us should be in the same European family.

He said that he is sorry that the negotiation process, conducted by the Contact Group's troika of envoys, did not yield a compromise solution, but significant steps forward were made though.

Bulgaria has always been in favour of dialogue and for us it is important that there is stability in the region and that violence does not return, Kalfin said and added that unilateral proclamation of Kosovo's independence would not be good.

Kalfin and Jeremic told the reporters that at today's meeting they talked about improving bilateral relations in many fields and agreed that relations between Serbia and Bulgaria are very good and that bilateral cooperation has never been better.

The Bulgarian minister of foreign affairs, who is also the country's deputy prime minister, will unveil today afternoon in the Tasmajdan park a monument to Bulgarian soldiers who fought for liberation from the Turkish rule – Vasil Levsk and Georgy Rakovski.