Kosovo Independence. “Serbia Prime Minister Ivica Dacic is a Traitor”, Government is a Sellout

[Baluarte]

Global Research has just commented on the agreement:

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Some are furious, others resigned, but most Serbs in northern Kosovo feel betrayed by a historic deal reached by Belgrade and Pristina to normalise ties in a step to heal the festering enmity in the Balkans’ last trouble-spot, AFP reported.

“Belgrade betrayed and cheated us,” Marko Dimitrijevic, a 32-year-old pharmacist, said bitterly while sipping a coffee in a cafe in the northern Kosovan city of Kosovska Mitrovica.

The European Union-brokered agreement, signed by Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and his Kosovo counterpart Hashim Thaci in Brussels on Friday, provides some autonomy for the roughly 40,000 Serbs in northern Kosovo who steadfastly refuse to recognise Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Serbia.

Details of the text — aimed at helping to resolve the last major dispute remaining of the bloody 1990s conflict that split the Balkans — have not been made public by the EU.

But an unofficial version published by local media says Kosovo Serbs would be given positions of authority in the regional police force and in courts in Serb-majority municipalities, albeit within Kosovo’s legal framework.

While the concessions — the result of several rounds of EU-mediated talks — are welcome, the historic deal has also infuriated many Kosovo Serbs who see it as a tacit acceptance by Belgrade of Kosovo’s independence.

Dimitrijevic angrily called on Dacic and his aides “to come here and tell us if they are ashamed” for having struck the deal.

By reaching the agreement “they recognised Kosovo as an independent state and are pushing us under Albanian authority,” added Gordana Petkovic, a 57-year-old clerk in Kosovska Mitrovica.

[Arbërori]

http://i.imgur.com/sVvYicF.gif

[Baluarte]

This follows Dacic's position regarding a referendum:

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No vote on Serbia-Kosovo deal

BELGRADE - Serbia stepped back from holding a referendum on a landmark accord with its former Kosovo province on Tuesday, saying it would push on with the deal seen as central to its hopes of joining the European Union.

The accord outlines an end to the ethnic partition of majority-Albanian Kosovo five years after it seceded from Serbia, and opens the door to European Union membership talks with Belgrade this year.

But the deal, agreed on April 19, faces resistance from around 50,000 Serbs in a small pocket of northern Kosovo, a region bristling with weapons and deep animosity.

Serbia's government last week raised the possibility of holding a referendum on the agreement, in a risky bid to get Serbs behind the pact. If people had voted against it, the whole accord would have collapsed.

But Serbia's Prime Minister Ivica Dacic told journalists on Tuesday that the government and a delegation of north Kosovo Serbs had not been able to agree on the terms of a referendum, and said it no longer appeared to be an option.

Opinion polls suggest a majority of Serbian citizens would back the accord, but Dacic said he had no guarantee the Kosovo Serbs would abide by the final decision.

“That agreement must be implemented,” Dacic told reporters. “Whether someone agrees with that, supports it or not, is not the issue.”

Serbia needs to demonstrate progress on the ground before the 27-nation EU rules in late June whether to grant accession talks, a process expected to drive reform and lure much-needed investors to the Serbian economy.

Dacic said discussions with the north Kosovo Serbs would continue next week.

He said he hoped they would participate in implementation of the deal, which would see the north integrated into Kosovo's legal system for the first time since the former province broke away in a 1998-99 war.

But he cautioned that the government had “all mechanisms at its disposal” to make sure state institutions currently working under Serbian law, known as 'parallel institutions', would be transferred to the jurisdiction of Kosovo.

He raised the possibility of cutting off salary payments and sacking public sector employees in the north, but said the government did not want to take that step. - Reuters