The EU is trying to prevent a looming conflict between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo on August 31
EU Special Representative for Dialogue Miroslav Lajcak and US Special Envoy for the Western Balkans Gabriel Escobar said today in Pristina that the international community is concerned about what happened on July 31.
Then the Serbian population of the self-proclaimed state held protests, which ended with the construction of barricades and arrests, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The reason for the discontent was the decision of the Albanian authorities of the region to introduce new rules for entry into its territory, as well as to replace Serbian car plates with Kosovar ones. After which the implementation of the decision was postponed for a month.
According to the envoys, they received assurances from Pristina leaders that they do not want the situation to escalate on September 1, Tanjug reports.
Lajcak also noted that the most important message is to show the unity of the EU and the US, Koha reports.
“We work side by side when it comes to normalizing relations between Kosovo and Serbia. And secondly, the international community is very concerned about what we saw on the ground on July 31st and expects that collectively the negotiators, the Kosovo leadership and the Serbian leadership will not allow this to happen again on August 31st, and that is why we are here,” Lajcak said .
He noted that Pristina must ensure that nothing bad happens on September 1.
The EU representative did not talk about the details of the meeting with the “prime minister” and “president” of the provisional institutions of Pristina, Albin Kurti and Vjosa Osmani, but added that he was optimistic.
“If I didn’t believe there was a solution, I wouldn’t have come. As I already said, this was a necessary and useful meeting, but we will see its results,” he said.
Escobar said Albanian leaders assured him there would be no violence on Sept. 1, when Pristina's decision on new entry rules and license plates was announced.
At the same time, both diplomats said that they had asked Kurti to postpone the implementation of this decision for three months.
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