Italy: Kosovo talks must continue


ROME -- Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said that now that the ICJ’s decision has been given, Serbia and Kosovo must continue talks.


He said that he hopes that Serbia’s request for candidacy status would receive support on Monday in Brussels at the scheduled meeting of the EU Council of Ministers.

“As the ICJ confirmed, Serbia and Kosovo must continue negotiations, because there are many sensitive questions, ethnic, historical, cultural and religious, that must be solved,” he said.

“In northern Kosovo, for example, there are Orthodox monasteries that represent the source of the Serbian Orthodox faith. The road that needs to continue, in any case, is the road towards Europe,” Frattini said.

He added that the ICJ’s decision clearly states that Kosovo must remain a unique case and that it cannot cause a domino effect, since such an event would lead to a crisis of international relations.