(Bloomberg) -- Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who’s trying to negotiate an agreement to normalize ties with Kosovo so his country can join the European Union, said he prefers partitioning the neighboring state along ethnic lines.
"I favor Kosovo partitioning -- that’s my policy," Vucic was quoted as saying on regional N1 television Thursday. "To have a territory that no one knows how to treat or what belongs to whom is always a source of potential conflict."
Kosovo has rejected the idea, which has also been explored by some western diplomats in the Balkans. Experts have warned that rethinking borders in the Balkans would pose a risk to the stability in a region still struggling to come to terms with the wars of the 1990s, which tore apart Yugoslavia in Europe’s deadliest post-World War II conflict.
Kosovo President Hashim Thaci has called for EU-mediated talks to conclude with mutual recognition, allowing Kosovo to join the United Nations. Serbia, backed by Russia and China, has vowed to never recognize Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008. Still EU officials have made the normalization of ties between the neighbors a key requirement to Serbia’s efforts to join the bloc next decade.
To contact the reporter on this story: Gordana Filipovic in Belgrade at gfilipovic@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey
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