New round of high-level dialogue to be held in Brussels on Tuesday

BRUSSELS - EU foreign policy and security chief Josep Borrell has called for Tuesday a high-level meeting of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue that will address a draft statute of a Community of Serb Municipalities and a declaration on missing persons.

Forty-five days after an Ohrid meeting at which the parties agreed an annex to an EU proposal on normalisation of Belgrade-Pristina relations, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Pristina's PM Albin Kurti will meet in Brussels again, with facilitation from Borrell and in attendance of EU special envoy Miroslav Lajcak.

According to a statement released by the European External Action Service, Borrell will make a statement after the meeting.

Unlike in previous rounds of the dialogue, a trilateral meeting will not be preceded by a bilateral one - instead, all parties will hold a joint meeting at the very start of discussions, announced for 6 pm.

"The meeting will focus on the implementation of the Agreement on the path to normalisation between Kosovo and Serbia. The Parties are expected to endorse the Declaration on Missing Persons as a first agenda item, to be followed by the presentation of/a discussion on the first draft statute of the Association/Community of Serb majority Municipalities in Kosovo. The Parties will also have the opportunity to discuss current issues of political importance," the statement said.

The past 45 days saw many political issues raised - Pristina was given visa liberalisation and also held early local elections in four Serb-majority municipalities in the north of Kosovo-Metohija, which were boycotted by the Serb population.

The Council of Europe launched the procedure of the so-called Kosovo's admission to the organisation and a newly-elected ethnic Albanian majority in the Kosovska Mitrovica municipal assembly filed a motion to open to traffic the main bridge on the Ibar River, a key hotspot since 1999.

Pristina has also announced amendments to its expropriation law, perceived in the Serbian public as being aimed at facilitating seizures of land from local Serbs for the purpose of building military and police bases.

A series of incidents that have taken place in the period include the shooting and wounding of Serb Milan Jovanovic, who was nearly killed in the attack.

As a result, local Serbs started a petition for a withdrawal of Pristina's special forces from the north of the province and Serbian top state officials held a meeting with Kosovo Serb representatives in Raska, central Serbia, after which the Serbian government adopted a package of measures.

Also, the chief negotiators of Belgrade and Pristina, Petar Petkovic and Besnik Bislimi, met on April 4, after which the topics of today's Vucic-Kurti meeting were announced.

A month after the Ohrid meeting, a joint committee was set up to monitor the implementation of the Ohrid Agreement and the accompanying annex.

The Committee will be chaired by Lajcak and Belgrade and Pristina will be represented by Petkovic and Agron Bajrami, respectively.

All details regarding the Committee's way of work will be specified after the high-level meeting in Brussels.