Serbia has agreed to abolish the entry-exit document for Kosovo ID holders and Kosovo has agreed not to introduce them for holders of Serbian IDs, Josep Borrell said. The agreement came after talks in Brussels earlier this week between Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, chaired by Borel. Petar Petkovic, the head of Serbia’s office for Kosovo, welcomed the agreement on free movement. “We managed to ensure peace and stability on the territory of Kosovo and preserve Serbian identities for the Serbs” living in Kosovo “and thus also the presence of the Serbian state on that territory,” he said. In Pristina, Kurti said: “Solutions to normalization must include reciprocity, because good neighborly relations entail that.” Serbia deeply resents Kosovo’s separatist regime and has never recognized its independence. Serbs in northern Kosovo have long refused to recognize Pristina’s authority and have remained largely loyal to the Serbian government in Belgrade. The Brussels meeting was called to try to defuse the rivalry between the Balkan neighbors that had led to violent incidents in northern Kosovo in recent weeks. Kurti and Vucic also met with visiting deputy foreign secretary Gabriel Escobar in Brussels late Wednesday, and Borrell thanked the United States for its support for the talks. “But this work on freedom of movement is not over,” he said. “There are some outstanding issues.” “I expect both leaders to continue to show pragmatism and constructiveness in order to solve the problem with their license plates,” he added. Another point of tension between the two countries has been over vehicle license plates that Pristina has imposed across Kosovo, including the Serb minority living in the north. Vucic on Saturday morning said the identity issue was “a tiny problem” but the license plate was “much more complicated.” Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority fought Serbian forces in 1999 with the support of NATO warplanes. In 2008 it declared its independence, which has been recognized by most, but not all, EU member states. Fresh violence erupted in late July in northern Kosovo, prompting NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Wednesday to say that the 3,700 NATO peacekeepers deployed in Kosovo would do whatever was necessary to ensure a safe environment.
