Kosovo-Serbia Talks Fail to Defuse Tensions

Diplomatic sources in Brussels said a meeting between Kosovo's President and Prime Minister, Hashim Thaci and Isa Mustafa, and their Serbian counterparts, Tomislav Nikolic and Aleksandar Vucic, failed to achieve anything.

"The meeting went terribly wrong and had no results," an anonymous diplomatic source told Deutsche Welle.

However, the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, was more upbeat, saying she was encouraged by the constructive engagement shown by both sides.

"All participants reconfirmed their full commitment to working together within the [EU-led] Dialogue," she said.

While the Kosovo delegation did not to comment on the latest talks, opposition politicians repeated that negotiations with Serbia were wrong to begin with and should be stopped.

"These meetings will be terrible, knowing that Serbia is seeking more each time … We believe that neither the process of dialogue ... nor the integration of [Kosovo] Serbs and normalisation of relations with Serbia, can be trusted to criminalised anti-nationalist politicians like Thaci and Mustafa," Driton Caushi, MP from the opposition Vetevendosje [Self- Determination] party, told BIRN.

Caushi said the worst thing was that Kosovo had expressed a readiness to continue with a process which from its initial phase had been unequal and unjust.

Pristina political analyst Imer Mushkolaj said this period of dialogue had clearly been difficult for both sides.

"Naturally, talks will not be easy, knowing that there are still to discuss hot topics, such as war reparations, missing persons, the return of pension funds and the possibility of Serbia recognising Kosovo's statehood," Mushkolaj told BIRN.

Mushkolaj said that in...