Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic have confirmed their attendance, but won't meet face-to-face, at a crisis meeting in Brussels on June 22 called by the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
Borrell called the emergency meeting to try to calm rising tensions between the two neighbors over ethnically divisive mayoral appointments and the detention of three Kosovar police officers last week by Serbian authorities.
"I have called the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo to Brussels for urgent meetings to find the way out of the current crisis. We need immediate de-escalation & new elections in the north with participation of Kosovo Serbs. This is paramount for the region & EU," Borrell wrote on Twitter.
Violent clashes between NATO's KFOR peacekeepers and protesting Serbs in northern Kosovo injured dozens late last month after Pristina tried to forcibly seat ethnic Albanian mayors after elections in the north boycotted by the border region's ethnic Serb majority.
On June 15, Kosovar Interior Minister Xhelal Svecla accused Serbia of "entering the territory of Kosovo and kidnapping" three Kosovar policemen who were on a patrol aimed at preventing smuggling. Belgrade, meanwhile, said the officers were arrested "deep inside" Serbian territory.
The three were being investigated on charges of unauthorized production, possession, carrying, and trafficking of weapons and explosive substances, Serb authorities said.
The United States and the European Union have urged Serbia to immediately release the three policemen.
While confirming that he would go to Brussels, Vucic said on June 22 he will meet in person with Borrell, though not with Kurti.
"Talking to him [Kurti] doesn't make sense. He gives us lectures on philosophy," said Vucic.
Kurti confirmed his participation in the Brussels meeting on June 21, saying that during the talks with Borrell he would insist on "the immediate and unconditional release of the three policemen who are being held hostage by Serbia...and the normalization of relations."
U.S. and EU officials have encouraged a quick return to implement a three-point plan outlined by the EU aimed at normalizing relations that have kept Kosovo out of international institutions and stoked ethnic resentments decades after bloody conflicts marked by ethnic cleansing.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade has refused to recognize it.