Lajcak, Escobar coming to Kosovo next week

The European Union's special envoy for dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, Miroslav Lajcak, and US Special Envoy for the Balkans Gabriel Escobar, are expected to visit Pristina and Belgrade next week -- more precisely Monday and Tuesday -- have announced diplomatic sources in Brussels for Radio Free Europe.

Their visit, according to these sources, will have two main goals:

The first goal is to find a solution to get out of the current situation, which risks damaging all that the EU considers successful in dialogue. So the focus will first be on reducing tensions and continuing efforts based on what has been proposed after the meeting in Moldova.

In Moldova, on June 1st, leaders of Germany and France, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron have urged Kosovo and Serbia to hold new elections in municipalities in northern Kosovo, during their meeting with the presidents of the two countries, Vjosa Osmanin and Aleksandar Vucinqi.

While the second goal will be to continue working on the sequence of steps to implement the agreement reached in Brussels and the annex the parties had agreed to in Ohrid.

The European Union had called reaching the agreement on the road to normalisation of reports as a “exit from the crisis management phase at a phase of normalisation”.

However, due to the escalation of the situation in northern Kosovo, what responsibility it bear to the Kosovo authorities, who insisted that elected mayors of municipalities enter the building, yet the EU's activity is back in crisis management.

Diplomats in the EU say it must ensure that recent tensions in the north do not jeopardise the deal reached, therefore they call for tensions to be dropped immediately and unconditionally, and that the parties return to dialogue and the normalisation process.

Protests in three municipalities in northern Kosovo -- the Serb-run residential area -- began on May 26th, when groups of local Serbs gathered in front of municipal objects to protest the entry of new Albanian mayors of Zvecan, Zubin Potok and Leposaviqi into them.

The escalation in northern Kosovo culminated on Monday, May 29th, when KFOR peacekeeping troops intervened in Zvecan “to avoid clashes between the sides and minimize the risk of escalation”, and were attacked by several violent protesters, which the Kosovo government says were Serbian criminal “”.

The United States and the allies said the use of force undermines efforts to normalise Kosovo-Serbia relations and called for calming the situation.

Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti has consistently defended the actions of the Kosovo Police, which helped install new Albanian mayors in Serb majority municipalities in northern Kosovo, despite resistance by local residents.