Vucevic Tells AFP Serbia Ready for Compromise on Kosovo

Milos Vucevic (BETAPHOTO/MILAN ILIC)

Kosovo, Serbian ammunition in Ukraine, lithium reserves - Serbia's new Prime Minister talked in a June 25 interview with the AFP about the main challenges that his cabinet faces, and was adamant that Serbia was ready for a "compromise" with Kosovo. 

Serbia "is absolutely ready to talk to Pristina," to "reach agreements and make compromises," Vucevic said a day before a meeting between Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Premier Albin Kurti in Brussels. 

"It is better to sit at the same table without results one thousand times than have a single incident on the ground. It is better that we sit down, meet, try to talk. Anything over more tensions," he added, although he did not say what the nature of Serbia's compromises would be. 

Vucevic also admitted that Serbian arms could end up on the frontlines in Ukraine as help to Kyiv, but that the arms were not a "Serbian contribution to one of the warring sides," and that these were weapons that were sold to Third World countries which then, he said, got redistributed. 

Speaking on a possible lithium mine in Serbia, Vucevic said that mining was one of the pillars that had created the country and that he did not see why that would not be the case in the future. 

"If Serbia has such an economic potential, interesting to the entire European continent, then this could be a turning point not just economically, but on the political plane as well," the Serbian prime minister said, adding that the government would never allow "someone to destroy rivers, valleys, forests, mountains."