Montenegro to Seal Border Deal with Kosovo

A Montenegrin parliamentary committee has backed confirmation of the border agreement with Kosovo and a vote on the issue could take place by the end of this year.

The Interior Ministry is set to begin a two-year process of marking the border line with Kosovo.

On Tuesday, parliament's legislative committee backed the deal which the Montenegro and Kosovo governments signed in August in Vienna, during the Western Balkans Summit.

MPs on the committee supported the agreement without any votes against, and recommended parliament to ratify it as in accordance with the Montenegrin constitution.

Opposition parties in Kosovo have been protesting passionately against the deal for months, accusing the Kosovo government of giving away territory to Montenegro.

They demand the cancellation of the agreement, saying that the border with Montenegro set by the 1974 Yugoslav constitution, needs to be officially agreed once again between the two countries.

The opposition says the government in Pristina has shifted the 1974 border to Montenegro's advantage.

But on Monday, the US State Department said that following a review of maps from the 1940s to the present, including those used by the commission demarcating the border, it was clear that the recently-delimited border closely aligns with the border defined by the 1974 Constitution.

"The borders we have depicted since 2008 match the proposed border of 2015 in detail," the State Department said, adding that it had reviewed the line of the Kosovo-Montenegro border prepared by the Kosovo State Commission for Marking and Maintenance of the State Border..

"We note that conclusion of the border demarcation agreement is an EU condition for visa liberalization...