Platform for Kosovo “will not be sensational”

Source: Politika, Tanjug

BELGRADE -- The Serbian government wants to determine its position with a platform for Kosovo, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivan Mrkić has stated.

Ivan Mrkić (file)

He also said that the government wanted the platform and position on Kosovo to be widely accepted.
However, the minister added that “some sensational new variant” should not be expected.

“This is not someone’s personal issue. It (the platform) needs to be seriously supported and we are counting that it will have a significant support in parliament as well,” he told daily Politika.

Mrkić pointed out that the platform for Kosovo was a priority issue but that other important issues required the government’s attention too.

“I we had only worked on the platform for Kosovo, we would have finished it quickly but we cannot afford that luxury,” he was quoted as saying.

When asked whether the work on the platform would result in a new solution, the foreign minister said that the government could not offer anything “spectacularly new”.

“You cannot expect any sensationally new variant. We will be as pragmatic as possible in order to protect our people in Kosovo,” Mrkić stressed.

“Once the platform is finished we will have a framework, a desired and determined goal, just like anybody who is preparing for negotiations. But we will not have any hidden goals that would only take care of us. The goals will be harmonized with the circumstances,” he was quoted as saying.

The minister said that a meeting between EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, Serbian PM Ivica Dačić and Kosovo PM Hashim Thaci in Brussels on Friday was “very important”.

“We went to Brussels in order to see if we could start the political dialogue that the new government and president said we wanted to have. Now we should concretize it a bit more and see what the content and framework of the dialogue should be,” Mrkić concluded.