Serbian ambassador to Russia: Vucic's meeting with Pompeo proves Kosovo is not done deal for US

Serbian Ambassador to Moscow Miroslav Lazanski has assessed today's meeting between President Aleksandar Vucic with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as very significant, adding that America organizing such meetings is proof that it insists on continued Belgrade-Pristina dialogue.

"By insisting on such meetings, America is showing that despite US ambassadors in both Belgrade and Pristina declaratively saying that the Kosovo independence process is a done deal, it is still not finished," Lazanski told RTS, Serbia's public broadcaster, on Tuesday.

Recommended

"If America insists that the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina should continue, and when Americans organize such meetings, it shows that there is room for some kind of solution that would be acceptable to Belgrade as well," Lazanski added.

He stressed that Kosovo's status, regardless of unilateral recognitions, is regulated by UN Resolution 1244, which can only be changed with the consent of UN Security Council members, and must be approved by the United Kingdom, France, China, America and Russia.

"Without that consent, there is no change of Resolution 1244, and from that no formal or legal change of (Kosovo's) status," Lazanski said.

Photo: Tanjug/Dragan Kujundzic

Asked if the center of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue is really moving from the EU towards big players, Lazanski says it's moving because the European Union has shown its impotence.

"They had plenty of time to prove themselves, they couldn't even force Pristina around those taxes (on Serbian goods). The EU has done nothing about any of the crises that have occurred in Kosmet (Kosovo and Metohija). There is this constant approach to equalize both sides, Belgrade and Pristina are both urged, yet it's clear what the main cause of all the problems in the southern Serbian province is," Lazanski emphasized.

Commenting on the US and UK's decision to have their representatives leave the Kosovo Property Agency, Lazanski said, "It's obvious that representatives of the UK and America in Pristina have had every opportunity to assure themselves on the ground whether there were fraudulent games in this type of privatizations."

"They probably aren't ready to act as some kind of sponsor of all this and some kind of a facade for everything that's going on," Lazanski said.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic will meet with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York today and attend a United Nations Security Council meeting on the Middle East.

The main topic of talks between Aleksandar Vucic and Mike Pompeo is expected to be the situation in Kosovo.

(Telegraf.rs/Fonet)