Petkovic: Pristina, EU Do Not Want Compromise Solution

Petar Petkovic/BETAPHOTO/MILAN OBRADOVIC/

Petar Petkovic, Belgrade's chief negotiator in the dialogue with Pristina, said after another round of talks on the use of the dinar currency in Kosovo on March 25 that the other side had not invested even a minimum of effort toward a compromise solution.

Petkovic said it seemed to him that "the collocutors, with their mentors, want to impose solutions, not find a compromise" and that the dialogue was going in the wrong direction, but not through any fault on the part of Belgrade.

"We laid out a proposal that takes a lot of account of our people. It was crafted carefully. We weighed every word with experts. However, the other side didn't invest one iota of effort to be able to say any sort of compromise was being sought," Petkovic said.

He added that it was very obvious that there was no political will in Pristina to find a solution, but that Serbia would continue to negotiate in order to keep the peace.

A tripartite meeting of Belgrade and Pristina's chief negotiators, Petkovic and Besnik Bislimi, and EU special representative Miroslav Lajcak, lasted three and a half hours, and was followed by bilateral meetings between the EU representative and the Belgrade and Pristina delegations. The negotiations are set to resume on April 4.