President Nikolić to attend cabinet session

A meeting of the Serbian government planned for Tuesday in order to adopt a draft resolution on Kosovo and Metohija, has been postponed.

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President Nikolić to attend cabinet session

A meeting of the Serbian government planned for Tuesday in order to adopt a draft resolution on Kosovo and Metohija, has been postponed.

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Tomislav Nikolić (Tanjug, file)

According to Belgrade's Večernje Novosti newspaper, President Tomislav Nikolić was to attend the extraordinary meeting of the cabinet.

If adopted, the draft - which will contain basic principles from Nikolić's platform on Kosovo and Metohija and should serve as a guideline for Belgrade's negotiators - will be sent to parliament by the end of this week.

"The platform represents what Serbia can achieve today. We cannot go above this, obviously, but we must not accept anything less if we have honour and dignity," the president said on Monday, and added:

"The text of the platform should go before parliament members, and I expect the national assembly to meet on Friday, where I should be invited, so that we can finally show what we wish to do and what we can do in front of the whole world. I am inviting everyone not to approach the platform with skepticism, mistrusts, and autocensure."

The draft resolution that MPs will vote on is essentially based on the platform's text and will be a clear signal to the power centers about Belgrade's wishes as the diplomatic fight for Kosovo and Metohija continues.

The daily unofficially learned that the document should contain five basic points: Serbia will never recognize Kosovo; the dialogue with Priština with continue - and each positive stage of the dialogue should be followed by the country's progress in EU integrations; the status of the northern part of the province should be solved, while guarantees on individual and collective rights of Serbs south of the Ibar River should also be provided.

The Serbian parliament is yet to confirm that a session will indeed be held on Friday, but Speaker Nebojša Stefanović has said that he would call consultations with heads of MP groups as soon as the government forwards the draft, and that a special session "would be organized very quickly".

On Monday in Kosovo, Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija Director Aleksandar Vulin stated that there would be no partition of the province, and that Nikolić's platform "clearly showed that".

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