Post by Fender on Jun 15, 2009 21:11:42 GMT -5
EU tacitly accepts Kosovo residents are Serbian citizens"
15 June 2009
An Albanian language daily today looks at the circumstances that Kosovo residents find themselves in as Belgrade negotiates a visa-free regime with the EU.
Priština-based Koha Ditore reported on Monday that Kosovo would be exempted from the visa liberalization debate of the European Union foreign ministers, noting that the EU "tacitly accepted that the inhabitants of Kosovo were Serbian citizens and that as such, they had the right to hold Serbian passports".
The daily reports that Swedish Ambassador to the EU Christian Danielsson has admitted that due to the divisions that exist between the EU member countries, there are certain limitation as to what the union can do for Kosovo.
At the same time, the European Stability Initiative (ESI) NGO has called on the EU not to make pressure on Serbia to stop issuing passports for the residents of Kosovo.
Kosovo would be part of the debate only in a segment dealing with ways to prevent Serbia from issuing biometric passports to the people of Kosovo, the daily noted, claiming that a number of diplomatic sources in the EU said that Belgrade had been asked "not to encourage Kosovo Albanians to seek Serbian passports".
The sources said that because of its five members that had not recognized Kosovo Albanians' unilateral independence declaration, the EU had not been able to put a clear condition before Serbia not to issue passports for the Kosovo residents, and at the same time, to demand from the country not to discriminate against its own citizens.
However, several technical demands have been put before Serbia which refer to the safety of the documents and which will make it more difficult for the Kosovo Albanians to obtain Serbian passports, Tanjug reports.
"We are very close to a solution of this problem," an unnamed EU diplomat told Koha Ditore, explaining that the solution implied that the people living in Kosovo would have to go to Belgrade to require and obtain new passports for which they would need original documents – something that is "not easy for them to do", the article says.
15 June 2009
An Albanian language daily today looks at the circumstances that Kosovo residents find themselves in as Belgrade negotiates a visa-free regime with the EU.
Priština-based Koha Ditore reported on Monday that Kosovo would be exempted from the visa liberalization debate of the European Union foreign ministers, noting that the EU "tacitly accepted that the inhabitants of Kosovo were Serbian citizens and that as such, they had the right to hold Serbian passports".
The daily reports that Swedish Ambassador to the EU Christian Danielsson has admitted that due to the divisions that exist between the EU member countries, there are certain limitation as to what the union can do for Kosovo.
At the same time, the European Stability Initiative (ESI) NGO has called on the EU not to make pressure on Serbia to stop issuing passports for the residents of Kosovo.
Kosovo would be part of the debate only in a segment dealing with ways to prevent Serbia from issuing biometric passports to the people of Kosovo, the daily noted, claiming that a number of diplomatic sources in the EU said that Belgrade had been asked "not to encourage Kosovo Albanians to seek Serbian passports".
The sources said that because of its five members that had not recognized Kosovo Albanians' unilateral independence declaration, the EU had not been able to put a clear condition before Serbia not to issue passports for the Kosovo residents, and at the same time, to demand from the country not to discriminate against its own citizens.
However, several technical demands have been put before Serbia which refer to the safety of the documents and which will make it more difficult for the Kosovo Albanians to obtain Serbian passports, Tanjug reports.
"We are very close to a solution of this problem," an unnamed EU diplomat told Koha Ditore, explaining that the solution implied that the people living in Kosovo would have to go to Belgrade to require and obtain new passports for which they would need original documents – something that is "not easy for them to do", the article says.