EU seeks historic Kosovo accord to open door for Serbia

By Aleksandar Vasovic

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union pressed on Friday for a historic accord to settle relations between Serbia and Kosovo that could open the door to membership talks with Belgrade, a potential milestone in the region's recovery from the collapse of Yugoslavia.

With the 27 EU members due to decide on Monday whether to back the start of accession talks, the prime ministers of Serbia and its former province met in Brussels for a 10th round of negotiations in six months.

On the table was a 15-point plan to end the ethnic partition of Kosovo and guarantee its viability, five years after it seceded from Serbia and became the last state to emerge from the ashes of federal Yugoslavia.

An accord would be a seminal moment in the region's recovery from a decade of war in the 1990s, and help to unlock Serbia's potential as the largest market in the former Yugoslavia.

In return for a form of autonomy for a small pocket of northern Kosovo inhabited by ethnic Serbs, the Albanian majority is demanding Serbia drop efforts to isolate the young country.

But the point is acutely sensitive for Serbia because it is determined not to recognize the independence of a territory that it sees as the cradle of its identity.

The Kosovo daily Koha Ditore said the two sides were edging towards a compromise under which Serbia would agree not to hinder Kosovo's "European integration", implicitly its path to eventual membership of the EU.

Talks broke down on Wednesday when Serbia refused to agree to Kosovo's accession to "international organizations", which Belgrade read as the United Nations.

"We've returned to Brussels because we got a guarantee from the European Union that Point 14 of the agreement has been modified," the Serbian state news agency Tanjug quoted an unnamed official close to the Serbian negotiators as saying.

The outline deal reflects a sea-change in official Serbian policy as it seeks to come to terms with Kosovo's loss in exchange for the economic boost of closer ties with the EU.

HIGH STAKES

Steeped in history and myth for Serbs, Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 1999 after 11 weeks of NATO air strikes to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians by Serb forces waging a counter-insurgency under late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.

It was the culmination of a decade of war in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo during the demise of Yugoslavia in the last decade of the 20th century. Serbia was an international pariah until Milosevic was forced out in 2000.

After neighbouring Croatia joins the EU on July 1, anchoring Serbia in accession talks would belatedly help to drive reform in the largest market in the former Yugoslavia, luring investors to a country of over 7 million people.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and is recognized by more than 90 countries, including the United States and 22 of the EU's 27 members.

But its development is also hampered - by an ethnic partition between the 90-percent Albanian majority and the northern Serb pocket, where Belgrade still has a fragile grip.

Talks mediated by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton have edged towards a deal on reintegrating the Serb north into the legal framework of Kosovo, in exchange for limited autonomous powers over policing and courts.

Implementation will not be easy, with some 50,000 Serbs in the north, centered on the divided town of Mitrovica, vehemently opposed to the Kosovo state. The partition frequently flares into violence and has frustrated NATO's hopes of cutting back a costly peace force in Kosovo that still numbers 6,000 soldiers.

The north Kosovo Serbs warned against signing the deal.

"I remind everyone in Belgrade that they should hold true to the Serbian Constitution, which states that Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia and that no one has the right to sign anything that would try to make these (Serb) municipalities work by Albanian laws," said Kosovo Serb politician Krstimir Pantic.

(Additional reporting by Adrian Croft and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels, Fatos Bytyci in Pristina; Writing by Matt Robinson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/eu-seeks-historic-kosovo-accord-open-door-serbia-123809467.html

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