Djurovic: Iceland has resisted pressure to put Pristina's CoE bid on agenda

STRASBOURG - Serbian Ambassador to the Council of Europe (CoE) Aleksandra Djurovic said on Wednesday Pristina's bid for membership in the organisation had not been discussed by the CoE Committee of Ministers earlier in the day.

In a statement to Tanjug, Djurovic said the Committee would also not hold an extraordinary meeting on this by the end of this week.

She noted that Iceland, which chairs the Committee, had succeeded in resisting pressure from Quint states to resolve the issue this week by a vote on launching the membership procedure and then proceed to the second stage of the process and table the matter to the Parliamentary Assembly of the CoE, which meets next week.

"This is a result of stepped-up diplomatic activity on our part in the past several days, when there was an intent by the Quint to get the item of the so-called Kosovo's membership application included in the agenda of today's meeting of the CoE Committee of Ministers," Djurovic said.

She added that, ahead of Serbian FM Ivica Dacic's trip to Strasbourg to mark the 20th anniversary of Serbia's CoE membership, Belgrade had requested that the issue be kept off the Committee's agenda.