Kosovo’s Minister for European Integration Blerim Reka has suggested that a compromise offered to Serbia in exchange of recognition and a UN seat for Kosovo could be a transit route to access the Mediterranean Sea through Kosovo and into the Albanian port of Durres.
In an interview with journalist Jeta Xharra on public broadcaster RTK, Minister Reka stated that exchange of territories as a condition for a UN seat for Kosovo was out of question.
“We could give Serbia a transit corridor to have access to the Adriatic [Sea] through Kosovo, through the Kosovo highway, to Durres [Albania]. I think this is a fair compromise for Serbia. But we cannot trade the UN seat for parts of Kosovo territory; it would be too much,” he said.
Reka welcomed the recent efforts by international actors to revive the dialogue between the two countries but noted that there was “surplus in speed and deficit in content”.
Commenting on President Thaci’s recent attack against the EU for failing to mediate an agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, Reka argued that eight years of dialogue mediated by the EU almost ended up being negotiations on Kosovo’s own statehood, but that Thaci was himself one of the man actors in the dialogue throughout all these years and had failed to criticize this approach before.
Reka said he will focus his ministry’s work in changing the EU’s “neutrality doctrine” toward Kosovo’s status, and will intensify lobbying with the five EU members states that have not recognized Kosovo – Cyprus, Greece, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain.
