This is FANTASTIC : Sell the land for a visa to any country in the EU ???!!! More humiliation, anyone!!? B
."...On a positive note, Ischinger urged the EU to let Belgrade know that it could soon drop visa requirements for Serbian citizens travelling to the bloc...." ======== http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/071014/world/serbia_kosovo_eu_russia_us_dipl omacy EU troika envoy urges Serbia, Kosovo to accelerate status talks 55 minutes ago BRUSSELS (AFP) - The European Union's Kosovo envoy urged Belgrade and Pristina Sunday to accelerate their talks on the future status of the Serbian province, with a December 10 deadline closing in. ADVERTISEMENT "There is quite a distance to be covered if really we want to reach an agreement," warned EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger, ahead of a new round of talks, this time in Brussels, on how much autonomy Kosovo should be granted. "This is a decisive phase," said the envoy, part of an international troika with Russia and the United States supervising the status talks. "We have now crossed the half-time mark and time is also becoming an important element." However Serbian and Kosovo officials have made little progress in resolving the status issue, neither in this series of talks which began in August, nor in UN-led negotiations last year. Serbia insists the province is an integral part of its territory and is willing to grant it wider autonomy, but Kosovo's large ethnic Albanian majority demands independence. When asked what could be achieved at the talks -- the second face-to-face meeting between the sides -- Ischinger said: "Movement forward, and we will strongly encourage it if we don't see that happen." "What we are not going to do is just sit there and waste time," he said, although he acknowledged that it "would not be a realistic expectation" for an agreement to be reached on Sunday. The US and Russian officials made no comment as they went into a troika meeting, to be followed by around two and a half hours of talks involving the Serbian and Kosovo officials. Serbia's Kosovo ministry said last week that "Belgrade will present its proposal of substantial autonomy for Kosovo with the internationally-guaranteed status for Kosovo Albanians as the most privileged minority in Serbia." Both delegations would then meet separately with the troika. A new round is scheduled to be held in Vienna next weekend. The troika format was set up after Russia backed Serbia at the UN Security Council by threatening to veto any move to give Kosovo "supervised independence", as recommended by a UN envoy. Moscow insists this would send the "wrong signal" to separatist regions elsewhere in the world, primarily Russia's own southern regions. But the ethnic Albanians maintain that they will declare independence unilaterally shortly after the talks end on December 10. "We are talking a couple of days, not weeks, not months," Prime Minister Agim Ceku warned Tuesday. The United States has said it would recognize such a move, but the 27 EU nations are divided over whether to follow suit. Senior EU officials hold little hope for success, and Albanian Foreign Minister Lulzim Basha warned the EU on Friday to brace for talks to break down. "The European Union has to start preparing now for the worst case scenario," he said. On a positive note, Ischinger urged the EU to let Belgrade know that it could soon drop visa requirements for Serbian citizens travelling to the bloc. "For the man on the street in Serbia that would be a very important and powerful signal," he said. "That is something that could be helpful in the overall context of these negotiations." The EU is already set to relax visa requirements on January 1, but the European Commission has said it plans to launch a "political dialogue" with Belgrade next year with the aim of dropping visas altogether. For it to happen though, Serbs would need more secure travel documents, like passports with biometric data such as identity photographs or fingerprints Sent using cyberus.ca WebMail - http://www.cyberus.ca/
