(18 Sep 2023)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Pristina, Kosovo - 18 September 2023
1. Various of government building
2. Pan of news conference
3. SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Albin Kurti, Prime Minister of Kosovo:
“After the meetings ended, and after my appearance in the media in Brussels where I exposed this nonsense scenario in which the aim is to suffocate the entire basic agreement except for the association (of municipalities with a Serbian majority), the intermediary (Miroslav Lajcak) released a sequencing document to the media, which they were told (Serbia’s President Aleksandar) Vucic accepted and Kurti rejected. Such information is completely untrue, adding here that Lajcak's plan applies exactly what Serbia requested in its document, that I mentioned earlier.”
4. Close of cameras
5. SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Albin Kurti, Prime Minister of Kosovo:
“Why all this information is nonsense from Lajcak's office? I believe that everyone understands this, because it is clear that the information from Lajcak's office is such that they do not worry about its neutrality and to protect the comprehensiveness of the sequenced implementation plan. And we paradoxically ended up in a situation where Vucic's warnings match with what the intermediary (Lajcak) said afterwards. Allow me to finish this introductory speech with the conclusion that on September 14 (in the talks in Brussels) there was a clear position of the mediator (Lajcak) against Kosovo in general and against the basic agreement in particular. Thus, they have gone too far with the attack on the future of Kosovo. In the situation we are in, either we will implement the basic agreement in its entirety, or we cannot implement only what Serbia wants. This logic is dead, and an independent republic of Kosovo will not follow such a path.”
6. Wide of briefing
7. SOUNDBITE (Albanian) Albin Kurti, Prime Minister of Kosovo:
“When all the meetings were over in the office where our dialogue team was staying, Lajcak's assistant brought us a document that was more than six months old. Constantly creative and constructive with proposals, they (the mediators) do not tell us that only one party is proposing, and in the end it is very interesting, that the more constructive and creative I am, the more nervous and unfair they are. Now I believe that creativity and constructiveness are rewarded, not punished.”
8. Mid of Kurti leaving
STORYLINE:
Kosovo’s prime minister on Monday accused the European Union special envoy in the normalization talks with Serbia of not being “neutral and correct” and “coordinating” with Belgrade against Pristina.
Albin Kurti said EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak had coordinated with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic in the EU-facilitated talks held last week in Brussels.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who supervised the talks in Brussels, blamed the latest breakdown on Kurti’s insistence that Serbia should essentially recognize his country before progress can be made on enforcing an agreement they reached in February.
On Monday, Kurti said Kosovo had offered a step-by-step proposal for the implementation of the agreement reached in February.
Serbia has never offered any proposal while Lajcak brought out an old Serbian document they had turned down earlier.
“These are divergent negotiations due to the asymmetry from the mediator, who is not neutral,” said Kurti at a news conference.
“We do not need such a unilateral envoy, not neutral and correct at all, who runs counter to the basic agreement, which is what is happening with the envoy, Lajcak,” he said.
AP video shot by Florent Bajrami.
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