President reacts to EU's stance on ZSO

President reacts to EU's stance on ZSO

Vucic also said he was "surprised by this statement."

"I want to them to show us where this is written in the Brussels agreement, I know the Brussels agreement by heart, you can find it on the websites of the government, the president, the Office (for Kosovo and Metohija), it does not say that anywhere," Vucic told RTS late on Tuesday.

He assessed that, after such statements, "it is unambiguously clear who is Serbia's friend, and who it cannot call by that name."

"The only thing that is good here is that when they say this publicly they are showing people in Serbia what negotiations in Brussels are like, how difficult it is, what one is facing," the president said.

He stressed that it was now important that Serbia preserves its "inner peace."

"It is up to us to be calm, composed, and send such messages, as well as to fight for our people," Vucic said.

Earlier in the day, asked by Tanjug whether the draft of the ZSO Statute was being worked on under the provisions of the Brussels agreement - which provides for greater powers for Kosovo Serbs - or according to the decision of the Constitutional Court of Kosovo - which reduces those powers to the level of an NGO - EU spokesperson Maja Kocijancic said the ZSO will be formed "in line with Kosovo law."

Reacting to this, the head of the Serbian Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Marko Djuric, asked how the court was entitled to unilaterally annul provisions and principles from the Brussels agreement.

"My question is: where, under what point, article or paragraph of the agreement is it envisioned that the Pristina constitutional court can unilaterally annul the provisions thereof, before the statute of the Community of Serb Municipalities has even been adopted?," Djuric said.

While Pristina insists that the ZSO be formed on the basis of Kosovo's constitution and laws, representatives of the Serb List, but also of the government of Serbia, demand that it be formed on the basis of the EU-mediated negotiations in Brussels that took place in 2013.

In the meantime, the Serb List have Pristina an ultimatum to begin work on the drafting of the Statute by April 20. Otherwise, they said they would form the ZSO on their own.

According to sources in Brussels, a management team set up by Pristina to work on the ZSO draft statute would also be assisted by OSCE experts.