Serbia, Kosovo Ratify Implementation Deal

Serbia and Kosovo have adopted a roadmap on implementing their historic deal to normalize relations, taking another step key to their integration into the European Union, officials said on Monday.

The governments in Belgrade and Pristina both approved an implementation plan to their landmark EU-brokered deal reached in April for the former foes to normalize relations, officials said.

The implementation plan sets out a timetable for a number of sensitive issues to be resolved, among them organizing local elections for the ethnic Serb minority in Kosovo, most of whom oppose Belgrade normalizing relations with Pristina.

Although no details on the timetable were released, local media reported that all of the steps should be fulfilled by the end of the year.

In Brussels, EU foreign chief Catherine Ashton, who has mediated the deal between Pristina and Belgrade, "welcomed the decision of both sides to adopt the implementation plan which translates into practice the provisions of the April agreement."

"The implementation plan is designed to solve problems on the ground and to ensure rapid progress of both Serbia and Kosovo towards the European Union," Ashton said in a statement.

"It represents a further step forward in the EU-facilitated dialogue and it is without prejudice to the positions of the two sides on the Kosovo status," Ashton said.

Serbia lost control over its former southern province in June 1999 after a NATO bombing campaign halted late strongman Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown against the pro-independence ethnic Albanian majority and ousted Serbian armed forces from Kosovo.

Belgrade and Kosovo Serbs refuse to recognise the 2008 independence of Kosovo, although more than 90 countries, including the United States and all but five EU member states, have done so.