OHRID: Kosovo and Serbia stopped short of signing a potentially landmark deal late on Saturday night after holding a marathon round of talks, even as the EU hailed progress towards reaching a long-sought agreement between the arch-foes.

The latest round of high-stakes negotiations followed months of EU-mediated shuttle diplomacy, nearly 25 years after the war between ethnic Albanian insurgents and Serb forces sparked a Nato bombing campaign that ended the conflict and saw Serbian government personnel and security forces pull out from the breakaway territory.

Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic engaged in negotiations for nearly 12 hours during a summit in North Macedonia’s Ohrid, picking over an 11-point plan unveiled by the EU last month during a Brussels summit. But in the end, they failed to iron out a final agreement that could be signed by both.

Published in Dawn, March 20th, 2023

Opinion

Editorial

What next?
Updated 21 Sep, 2023

What next?

One wonders that if administrative measures were all that were needed to arrest the rupee’s sorry slide, why were they not taken sooner?
Greater representation
21 Sep, 2023

Greater representation

PAKISTAN now stands at a significant juncture, with the names of 11.7m more women added to the voter list, ...
Lost generations
21 Sep, 2023

Lost generations

IF those who wield power in Pakistan think that the nation can progress when tens of millions of its children have...
Sikh activist’s murder
Updated 20 Sep, 2023

Sikh activist’s murder

Perhaps Indians have taken a page out of Mossad’s handbook in organising a hit on an individual they considered a ‘terrorist’.
ECP’s preparations
Updated 20 Sep, 2023

ECP’s preparations

The revision of the delimitation timeline still does not mean elections will be held according to the constitutional schedule.
Futures on hold
20 Sep, 2023

Futures on hold

IT is a sad turn of events when one is caught between choosing to fill their fuel tanks to get to work or paying the...