Josep Borrell, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said on Saturday that Serbia and Kosovo had settled a dispute over movement across their borders.
“We have an agreement… Under the EU-brokered dialogue, Serbia has agreed to cancel entry/exit documents for Kosovo ID holders,” Borrell wrote on Twitter, and that Kosovo had agreed to do the same.
“Kosovo Serbs and others will be able to travel freely between Kosovo and Serbia using their identity cards. The European Union has just received guarantees from Prime Minister (Albin) Kurti in this regard,” he added.
Kosovo, which has a predominantly Albanian population, declared independence from Serbia in 2008, something Belgrade refused to acknowledge. There is a minority of Serbs, representing five percent of the population, in Kosovo’s 1.8 million people, 90 percent of whom are Albanians.
The current dispute arose after Kosovo demanded that the Serb minority change their car number plates and identity papers to be issued by the authorities in Pristina. But about 50,000 Serbs, who live in northern Kosovo and consider Belgrade in Serbia their capital, refused to implement the decision and closed roads in protest before NATO peacekeepers supervised the end of their protest.
The tension had subsided after Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti agreed, under pressure from the United States and the European Union, to postpone the implementation of the order to change car number plates until the first of next September.
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