Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said that in order to rescind his country’s controversial tariffs on Serbian goods, Pristina wants a final, comprehensive agreement with Belgrade about Kosovo’s status.
Kosovo’s premier Ramush Haradinaj on Tuesday reinforced his message that Pristina wants negotiations on the basis of “principles of mutual recognition” with Belgrade if it is to drop its 100 per cent tariffs on Serbian goods.
“It is our desire that a comprehensive and legally binding agreement between the two countries can be concluded in 2019… leading to mutual recognition and Kosovo’s membership of the United Nations,” Haradinaj said in a letter to other prime ministers around the world, which he posted on Facebook.
On Monday, Haradinaj also sent a letter to the so-called ‘Quint’ countries – the US, Germany, France, Britain and Italy – listing conditions to revoke the tariffs.
The conditions included a proposal for an international conference backed by the US and EU to draw up a final agreement with Serbia.
Haradinaj said in the letter that the conference should be held “for the purpose of concluding a legally binding comprehensive agreement between Kosovo and Serbia to resolve all outstanding issues between the two countries”.
He said the US and EU must reject “any redrawing of the current borders of Kosovo, or partition of Kosovo, or land swaps of any nature whatsoever”.
Another condition stated by Haradinaj in the letter was that “any form of association of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo” should not be granted executive powers.
Just after Haradinaj published his government’s conditions to revoke the tariffs, his coalition partner Kadri Veseli, the speaker of parliament and the leader of the Kosovo Democratic Party, PDK, proposed a temporary suspension of the import taxes, which are also applied to Bosnian imports.
“The tax should not be revoked but suspended for 120 days, and meanwhile concrete conditions on its suspension should enter into force. And after 120 days if there is not a new situation in which the behaviour of Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina has fundamentally changed, the tax will be reintroduced,” Veseli wrote on Facebook.
The Kosovo government initially imposed a tariff of 10 per cent on Serbian goods on November 6, citing Serbia’s “negative behaviour” towards Kosovo’s statehood and its international campaign against Kosovo’s recognition.
The decision to sharply increase this to 100 per cent was made on November 21, a day after Kosovo failed to secure the support of two-thirds of Interpol’s 192 member states to join the international police organisation, a failure which it blamed on Serbian lobbying.
Since then, Haradinaj has been facing international pressure to revoke the tariff hikes.
