Petkovic meets with Sorensen

BELGRADE - The head of the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija Petar Petkovic met on Wednesday in Belgrade with the EU special envoy for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue Peter Sorensen and pointed out the scale of potential consequences for Serbs in the province in case Pristina started enforcing its so-called laws on foreigners and motor vehicles from March 15.

Petkovic noted that the discriminatory legislation directly threatened more than 10,000 Serbs living and working in Kosovo-Metohija and that it was a threat to fundamental human and civil rights, the right to work, the right to freedom of movement and the right to family life, health care and education, the Office for Kosovo-Metohija said in a statement.

"Any intent to abolish those rights leads to direct expulsion of Serbs from Kosovo-Metohija and to an administrative ethnic cleansing of the Serbs, and represents an attack on the functioning of health care and educational institutions of the Republic of Serbia in the territory," Petkovic said.

For that reason, it is necessary to urgently launch discussions on a draft statute of a Community of Serb Municipalities because the functioning of Serb institutions in Kosovo-Metohija is defined by the First Brussels Agreement on Normalisation of Relations and the General Principles, Petkovic added, noting that the agreement was the cornerstone of the protection of the Serbs' collective and individual rights.

"For the sake of preserving peace and stability, Belgrade is ready to seek within the dialogue all sustainable and applicable solutions to problems threatening to jeopardise the survival of Serbs, while unilateral, illegal and escalatory moves by Pristina lead to instability, new crises and tensions on the ground," Petkovic noted.