Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has announced that a U.S. State Department official will visit Belgrade next week amid continued tensions over Kosovo and pressure on Serbia to introduce sanctions against Russia.
Vucic said on January 4 that Derek Chollet, a State Department counselor, is to visit Belgrade on January 11 or 12. Chollet last month had to cancel a visit to the Western Balkans and Brussels after he tested positive for COVID-19.
"I believe in creating better relations with the United States, we'll see how it goes. It won't be an easy conversation, but I believe we can talk," Vucic said at a press conference.
Vucic said European Union negotiators would travel to Belgrade after Chollet's visit, and the officials would discuss possible solutions to the tensions over Kosovo, which were heightened last month when ethnic Serbs set up roadblocks in northern Kosovo over the arrest of an ethnic Serbian ex-police officer.
The roadblocks were dismantled after Kosovar authorities announced the release of the former policeman, Dejan Pantic, who had been held on suspicion of being involved in an attack on Central Election Commission officials.
"We wanted peace, and we barely saved it," said Vucic, who last week said all roadblocks would be removed following calls by the United States and the European Union to de-escalate tensions.
"We haven't provoked anyone, not even for a single second, unless some people consider it a provocation that we see our people in Kosovo as citizens of our country," Vucic said.
U.S. and European officials have been trying to speed up dialogue on the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina. The parties have been offered a French-German proposal on behalf of the EU, Vucic said.
The document has not been made public but has the support of the United States, according to Vucic, who insisted that it is only a draft and complained that the EU and United States "are already behaving as if it is a proposal that you must not refuse."
Asked what an acceptable solution would be, Vucic said that Serbia sticks to its constitution but is "ready to discuss countless compromise solutions." The Serbian Constitution states that Kosovo is part of Serbia.
Kosovo, which has an overwhelmingly ethnic Albanian majority, broke away from Serbia after a war in 1998-99.
It declared independence in 2008, but Belgrade has never recognized it and encourages Kosovo's 120,000 ethnic Serbs to defy the central Kosovar government's authority.
Since 2011, Belgrade and Pristina have been in an EU-led dialogue on the normalization of relations.
Vucic also said the EU's calls for his country to join sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine represent interference in Serbia's internal affairs.
"Thank you very much for meddling in our internal affairs in such a brutal way," he said.
Although Serbia is formally seeking EU membership, it has repeatedly ignored calls to align its foreign policies with the 27-country bloc, including joining the sanctions against Moscow.