Serbian PM says Belgrade never severed economic ties with Kosovo

NEWS 11.10.201917:11
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Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said on Friday that Serbia never broke off economic links with Kosovo before Pristina imposed the 100 percent tariffs on Serbian goods.

“Not in 2004 after the pogrom of the Serbs, not in 2008 after Kosovo unilaterally declared independence, nor when Office for Kosovo Director Marko Djuric was arrested – companies from central Serbia were at a business fair in Pristina a day later,” she told reporters at the Serbian Chamber of Commerce. “Those ties were never broken as in November 2018 when Pristina imposed the 100 percent tariffs on goods from Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina,” she said.  

Brnabic said that the US President’s envoy to the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue Ambassador Richard Grenell said the focus should be on the economy and added that she told him that trade never stopped. “We always said that the economy should lead the way when political ties are hard to achieve,” she said.  

Commenting Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama’s call for Kosovo’s leaders to lend support to the dialogue which he said should end in mutual recognition, Brnabic said that she hopes the dialogue will continue soon once the tariffs are revoked and the signed regional agreements implemented. “That is the minimum minimum,” she said, adding that Rama’s words were completely opposed to what she discussed with Grenell.