Matoshi: Serbia Prolonging Association hopes it wins more with final agreement

A draft status proposal for Association has already been handed over to the European Union by the management team, which consists of only four representatives of the Kosovo Serb community.

Halil Matoshi, political adviser to Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, tells Radio Free Europe that the Government of Kosovo has not received any proposals for the draft association state.

The Serbian “Pala has only submitted the commission's work report since the preliminary government saw them start association, but the final draft still does not have”, Matosh said.

Serbian knowledge of political developments, Petar Miletic, speaking of Radio Free Europe, says the opinion that reducing the issue of forming association in the matter of his statute is the wrong direction.

This is not technical but political issues, because the Serb municipal community is not something that would have to deal with only municipal issues, but political issues. Therefore, there is great fear in Pristina of what Serbs may be politically powerful if they form the Community of Serb municipalities. I believe that's why blockades are happening. So it's about the competencies of the Community and that's why it's not achieved to its formation and not because some lawyers have not been able to write the” statute, Miletic stressed.

He has expressed confidence that Kosovo authorities are deliberately procrastinating the formation of association, in hopes that they will not have to do so at all.

But, Matoshi has stressed that Belgrade authorities themselves have influenced the procrastination process of forming association, hoping to resolve this issue under the final agreement on normalising relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

As for the Association of Serb majority municipalities, it seems that the Serbian side, in co-ordination with official Belgrade policies, is trying to make progress to connect it with a final agreement, whatever it is, hoping it will benefit more. However, Kosovo Prime Minister Haradinaj's firm stance is that the Association will take place and on the side of the government, the statute can be written as of today, but will be exclusively in the waters of the Constitution and the laws of Kosovo. At this point there will be no millimeter movement”, Matosh said.

On the other hand, Miletic expresses the opinion that, however, the main culprits for failing to map out the Association statute and its non-formation, is Belgrade's official, or the power of Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq.

“They, after holding local and parliamentary elections in northern Kosovo, have not said that after that there can be no agreement without the formation of the Community. This has been the only solution to how to achieve a community formation. But, already, we will surely expect a legally binding final agreement so that the Community can be formed. But neither does this guarantee that the Community will have those competencies which Serbs need to feel more secure and comfortable in Kosovo”, Miletic said.

Earlier, one of the members of the management team for drafting the Kosovo Constitution and adoption of separate laws so that the association can have executive competencies”.

Officials in Kosovo institutions had stressed that Kosovo has no intention of changing the Constitution to introduce the competencies of association within it.