Kasoulides: Serbia will not have to recognise Kosovo

BELGRADE - Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides stated that Serbia will not have to recognise Kosovo's independence at the end of the accession talks because five EU members have not done that either.

As the things look now, Serbia will not be obliged to recognise Kosovo's independence because decisions in the EU are adopted by a consensus and we have five EU member countries which do not recognise Kosovo's current status, Kasoulides said in an interview for Tanjug.

Cyprus is one of the five EU countries which have not recognised Kosovo's independence and Kasoulides said that it is still too early to discuss the end of the negotiating process.

He reiterated that the international community welcomed the agreement on the normalisation of the Belgrade-Pristina relations achieved in Brussels on April 13, 2013, and noted that this required a lot of courage and statehood skill.

When asked about potential parallels between the issue of Cyprus and the Kosovo issue, Kasoulides recalled that the leaders of Greeks and Turks recently achieved an agreement according to which the future of Cyprus lies in a federation comprising two zones and a unified country with its sovereignty and nationality.

Comparisons with Kosovo cannot be made as no two problems are the same, he said.

Look at how we completed the project after we became a member country, and we simultaneously had a problem with the occupation of a part of the island, the Cypriot foreign minister said and added that what Serbia needs now is to be well-prepared so that its candidacy is such that it cannot be refused at the moment when the decision on membership is adopted.

He stated that the relations between Serbia and Cyprus are excellent...

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