'Compromise Solution': Serbian FM Proposes to Divide Kosovo Into Two Parts

The division of Kosovo into Serbian and Albanian parts in the process of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue can be a compromise solution to the problem, Serbian Foreign Minister and First Deputy Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said.

BELGRADE (Sputnik) — Last Monday, President of Serbia Alexander Vucic called for a broad public dialogue on Kosovo and Metohija. The foreign minister stressed that the option he had proposed was his personal vision and initiative as a politician, not an official position of the state.

"Personally, in connection with the dialogue on Kosovo, I will check the possibility of what I have been advocating for years with the President of Serbia. Delimitation or whatever it is called — that is Serbian, and that is Albanian. In the agreement of the Serbs and the Albanians this is the only possible permanent compromise solution, with a special status for our monasteries and churches, and the Community of Serb Municipalities in the south of Kosovo," Dacic said in his op-ed on the Blic online portal.

Dacic clarified that if such a delimitation is impossible, it will contribute to the search for another real solution. According to the politician, the Kosovar Albanians do not want to be part of Serbia, "but we no longer have the strength and need to fight, because nothing we can achieve with it." Dacic emphasized that as Pristina never agrees to recognize the power of Belgrade, the Kosovo Serbs will not become part of the self-proclaimed republic of Kosovo or Albania.

Dacic said in May 2011 that the only real solution was "to leave the Serbs in Serbia, and separate the other part where the Albanians live." He called this option "a mechanism that will solve the problem quickly." The Serbian government then distanced itself from the statement of the politician who then was the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Deputy Prime Minister.

The Kosovo War between the ethnically Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and the forces of Yugoslavia, consisting of Serbia and Montenegro in 1998-1999, ended after the UN-backed international intervention following NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia's troops.

In 2008, Kosovar Albanian groups in Pristina unilaterally proclaimed independence from Serbia, and over 100 UN member states officially recognized Kosovo. However, Serbia, alongside Russia, China, Israel and several other countries do not recognize Kosovo’s independence. About 100,000 Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija live in the north of the province and several enclaves in its southern part.