Kosovo's Chief Negotiator: Agreement reached with Serbia on commission for missing persons during the war

2026-01-22 20:13:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

Kosovo's Chief Negotiator: Agreement reached with Serbia on commission for

Kosovo's chief negotiator, Besnik Bislimi, said that an agreement has been reached with Serbia on the operationalization of the joint commission for the implementation of the agreement on persons missing during the war in Kosovo.

After the new round of dialogue in Brussels, Bislimi stated that it now remains for representatives of the Kosovo and Serbian delegations to meet "in the coming weeks and determine the first priorities for the work of the joint commission."

The agreement was reached after several hours of talks that the European mediator in the dialogue, Peter Sorensen, held separately with Bislim and Serbia's chief negotiator, Petar Petkovic.

At the end of these meetings, a joint meeting was held in the evening hours, in which the agreement was formalized. The new round of dialogue took place after Sorensen's visit to Pristina and Belgrade last week.

On the issue of missing persons, Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbia's President Aleksandar Vu?i? agreed in 2023 on a Joint Declaration on Missing Persons.

The parties agreed on the full implementation of the joint statement on missing persons during a trilateral meeting between chief negotiators in December 2024 in Brussels.

The first meeting was scheduled to be held in January, but the Serbian side refused to participate due to actions to close down offices supported by Serbia in Kosovo.

Today's meeting was the first in the framework of the dialogue on the normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo this year. During his visit to Pristina on January 14, Sorensen said regarding the dialogue that "I have hopes that the year 2026 will give us what the year 2025 did not give us."

"What we're going to do is make sure the parties sit down and talk. We need to find a way to make that happen," Sorensen stressed in Pristina.

He said he would work to find a way for the two neighboring countries to hold high-level talks in an effort to normalize relations.

Kosovo and Serbia have not held a high-level meeting since 2023, following rising tensions between them due to an attack by a group of armed Serbs on Kosovo Police in the Serb-majority north in September of that year.

Kurti – who is expected to head the country's government for a third four-year term – has conditioned the continuation of the dialogue on the surrender of the suspect in the attack in Banjska, Zvecan, that left a sergeant dead, Milan Radoi?i?.

Radoicic was deputy leader of the Serbian List, the largest Kosovo Serb party, when the attack occurred and claimed responsibility for it. Belgrade has refused to hand him over to Kosovo, and he is said to be at large in Serbia.

Serbia also has its own conditions for dialogue, as Petkovic reiterated after meeting with Sorensen on January 16 in Belgrade. The Serbian chief negotiator said that progress in the bloc-mediated dialogue depends on Kosovo's willingness to establish an association of Serb-majority municipalities.

Kosovo and Serbia already reached an agreement on a path to normalization, known as the Ohrid Agreement, in 2023, but are not implementing it.

Among the points of the agreement is the establishment of the Association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo, but Pristina has not taken steps to fulfill this request. /REL