PRISTINA, Kosovo — The European Union envoy for the Western Balkans on Friday urged Kosovo and Serbia to step up their efforts at normalization talks, saying these are decisive toward the two countries' membership in the bloc.
Miroslav Lajcak was in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, for talks with Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi, in charge of the Kosovo side of the EU-facilitated talks. The local media said the envoy was not expected to go to Belgrade, Serbia's capital, as on previous trips.
The EU and the United States are pressing both sides to implement agreements that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti reached in February and March last year.
''The agreement has also become part of Kosovo's EU path and Serbia's EU path,'' Lajcak told reporters after meeting with Bislimi, adding that ''there are statements here and there which are not helpful.''
Lajcak, whose mandate has been extended until January by the bloc's Council, is working on the next high-level meeting for the two countries' leaders.
The relationship between Kosovo and Serbia remains tense and the 13-year-long normalization talks facilitated by the European Union have failed to make progress, especially following a shootout last September between masked Serb gunmen and Kosovo police that left four people dead. NATO-led peacekeepers have also increased their numbers along the Kosovo-Serbia border.
Washington, Brussels and the peacekeeping force have urged Kosovo to refrain from unilateral actions fearing the revival of inter-ethnic conflict, after authorities last week closed five so-called parallel institutions in the north — where most of the ethnic Serb minority lives.
Kosovo's Serbs said they would block roads to four out of five border crossings later Friday in protest against the closures. They also demand Kosovo police withdrawal from the north and want the peacekeepers to take control.
