Kosovo Serbs Kept in Dark Over Association Statute

Kosovo politicians have complained of a lack of information about the draft statute for the proposed Association of Serbian Municipalities, which is designed to guarantee their autonomy in the mainly ethnic Albanian country.

The Freedom, Democracy, Justice Party, SDP, said the draft should have been made public and residents allowed to have an input, instead of learning about its content from the negotiators in Brussels.

Ksenija Bozovic, from the SDP, says that officials from the EU, Kosovo and Serbia have given only contradicting information whenever something was negotiated in Brussels.

"It remains to be seen whether this will be the case with the first draft of the statute. Nobody has seen this draft," Bozovic told BIRN.

The reason why they have no hard information on the draft statute is the procedure for creating this document that was agreed on in Brussels.

The agreement between Kosovo and Serbia stipulated that the team in charge of drafting the statute should present it in Pristina by August 4, a deadline the team has said it would meet.

The draft will later be presented to the presidents of Kosovo and Serbia, Hashim Thaci and Aleksandar Vucic, during one of their meetings in Brussels.

A blogger from the Serbian north of Kosovo, Marko Jaksic, says the draft statute is not being made public possibly because there are parts of it that neither side will like. "They are probably afraid of the public's reaction," Jaksic told BIRN.

He added that the Kosovo side could also be buying time, presenting the draft to honour the deadline but without any intention to implement it before a final agreement with Belgrade is reached.

A spokesman for the main Kosovo Serb party, the Belgrade-backed Srpska Lista, Igor Simic...