Kosovo’s chief negotiator, Besnik Bislimi, said that the meeting between him and his Serbian counterpart, Petar Petković, mediated by the European Union envoy, ended with “no results on important issues” on Thursday in Brussels.
The trilateral meeting began on Thursday afternoon, following bilateral meetings that the EU envoy Miroslav Lajčák held with representatives of both countries, seeking ways to implement past agreements on the path to normalizing relations.
This was the first trilateral meeting in over three months, as in recent meetings, Bislimi and Petković had not reached an agreement to meet together.
EU spokesperson Peter Stano, speaking a day before the meetings within the framework of the dialogue, had stated that holding a joint meeting would depend on the willingness of the parties.
At the last meeting in September, Lajčák failed to convince Bislimi and Petković to hold a trilateral meeting due to disagreements over the topics they wanted to address.
Regarding the issues expected to be discussed in the Brussels meetings, Stano said they pertain to the need for the implementation of obligations from the ongoing dialogue, including the Agreement on the Path to Normalization of Relations, which Kosovo and Serbia agreed to in early 2023.
“The agenda is the same as it has been in the past, namely the urgent need to start implementing the obligations from the dialogue. The urgent need to begin implementing the Ohrid Agreement and the need for both Kosovo and Serbia to agree on progress in the dialogue,” said Stano.
So far, bilateral meetings have usually taken place between the EU’s dialogue envoy, Miroslav Lajčák, and the chief negotiators of Kosovo and Serbia, but not trilateral meetings.
The last time a trilateral meeting was held was on July 2nd of this year. However, after the meeting, the parties emerged with diametrically opposed views on what had occurred.
The parties accused each other of a “lack of readiness for dialogue.”
