Petkovic meets with Quint ambassadors, EU delegation head

BELGRADE - The director of the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija Petar Petkovic met with the ambassadors of Quint states and the head of the EU Delegation to Serbia on Friday to discuss next week's new round of the Brussels dialogue on Pristina's "unilateral and unlawful decision to ban the dinar and dinar cash operations in Kosovo-Metohija," the Office said in a statement.

Petkovic noted that the dinar issue must be resolved as urgently as possible as the ban on the Serbian currency put the survival of Serbs in Kosovo-Metohija and the work and the existence of all Serbian institutions in the province in jeopardy.

"This will be the seventh Brussels meeting on Pristina's decision to ban the dinar in Kosovo-Metohija. Unfortunately, all meetings to date have shown that there is no realistic approach, nor political will in Pristina to solve this problem," Petkovic noted, adding that a series of concrete proposals by Belgrade had been rejected by Pristina, which he said was fully responsible for resolving the current crisis and the sole culprit for it.

Petkovic and experts from Belgrade's negotiating team discussed with the Western diplomats finding ways of overcoming the crisis and a humanitarian disaster caused by Pristina's decision.

Petkovic noted that, since the very beginning, Belgrade had stood ready to find a compromise, sustainable and acceptable solution but that the other side was setting "impossible conditions and obstacles all the time, with the sole goal of thwarting compromise and deepening the crisis further."

He informed the diplomats that Belgrade's delegation would continue to insist on the establishment of the Community of Serb Municipalities and noted that it was a precondition for ensuring the individual and collective rights of the Serbs and their survival in Kosovo-Metohija.

Petkovic drew to their attention the daily terror and the physical and institutional violence by the Albin Kurti regime against Serbs in the province, noting that more than 500 ethnically motivated incidents had been registered in Kosovo-Metohija since Kurti's rise to power, which he said clearly showed the gravity of the situation the Kosovo-Metohija Serbs were in.

"Belgrade will continue to safeguard the security and the survival of the Serbs in the province while remaining open to constructive dialogue and compromise as the only instrument for creating the conditions for permanent stability and prosperity in Kosovo-Metohija and the Western Balkans as a whole," Petkovic also said.