Dacic: No word about UN seat for Kosovo

Dacic said in a TV B92 broadcast that EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, who is the mediator in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, offered him and Kosovo Prime Minister Hasim Taci to sign something, but that he could not agree to it. "She has had a negative experience with a number of negotiators. Even some things on which Taci and I agreed were not observed by the Kosovo party, and she wanted something to be signed, but I cannot sign a separate part of a document, since we request that the issue of parallelism be resolved within the community of Serb municipalities. We can resolve issues one by one, but if we do so, the solutions cannot be the same as in the package," the PM said. Dacic also pointed out that neither the issue of Kosovo's UN seat nor any other status-related issues were opened during the talks in Brussels. "These talks are not status-related. We would like them to be such. I also said in Brussels that demarcation would be the best solution, but they do not want to talk about that. I think that Catherine Ashton does not want to talk about that either," Dacic said. Asked if Belgrade and Pristina are close to reaching an agreement on northern Kosovo, he said that an agreement is "so close, but yet so far away," because there is disagreement on the issue of jurisdiction of Serbian municipalities. Although it is impossible to resolve in several days the issues that have been accumulating for centuries, Serbia must not miss its historical chance to resolve the Kosovo issue in a permanent way, he stressed. The prime minister also said he is not ready to end with the Kosovo issue by handing over Kosovo. "Still, I believe that Serbia should resolve this and all other accumulated issues as soon as possible. If we do not resolve the issue of Kosovo quickly, not only that we will not be able to solve some other problems, but the issue of Kosovo-Metohija will be even further removed from a positive solution," Dacic underlined. The prime minister said that he does not make any decisions in the dialogue independently, but in coordination with the government and the Serbian president, all in keeping with the resolution adopted by the parliament. "It is just that I do not want to call for collective suicide. I will not take part in this," Dacic said, adding that, as times passes, the number of Serbs in Kosovo decreases. "I would like us to stop dying for Serbia and rather defend our national interests with a wise policy," Dacic concluded.