Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti has dismissed as "unconscionable" demands made last week by Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic for the return of local Serbs to Kosovar institutions.
Kurti, responding to Vucic's demands for the first time, also said on September 17 that they were part of an "aggressive campaign for new conflicts."
The response came as senior representatives from Serbia and Kosovo gathered in Brussels for internationally mediated talks on implementing past commitments aimed at normalizing relations between the Balkan neighbors.
The countries' chief negotiators in the so-called "dialogue" -- Serbia's director for relations with Kosovo, Petar Petkovic, and Kosovar Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi -- met separately with EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak, but he was unable to bring the parties together for a trilateral meeting.
Lajcak said he would continue to be available to the parties "and we will continue in the coming weeks." Bislimi and Petkovic blamed each other for the failure of the sides to agree to a three-way meeting.
Similar meetings have recently fallen through despite heavy public pressure from outside diplomats keen to patch a security risk in Southeastern Europe and regain regional momentum for further Western integration and stem the influence of outside powers Russia and China.
Belgrade has never acknowledged the independence that Pristina declared in 2008, and violent flare-ups and standoffs persist between Kosovar authorities and tens of thousands of ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo in a region still scarred by brutal wars and ethnic cleansing in the 1990s.
Among the demands Vucic laid out last week are new local elections in the north, the return of Serbs to the Kosovo Police force and judiciary, and the withdrawal of Kosovo Police special units from the northern region. He said it was his intention to boost Belgrade's support for Serbs in Kosovo "significantly and dramatically."
"His demands, his measures, are out of desperation and represent irrationality and are not peaceful at all, but rather part of the aggressive campaign for new conflicts that undoubtedly have no place in Kosovo," Kurti said in his response.
Vucic said his demands must be met in order to make progress in the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.
He also urged Serbs who had quit jobs with police and other Kosovar institutions in protest nearly two years ago to retake the jobs, and he laid out administrative plans to help Serbs draw salaries and other financial benefits on the Serbian side of the joint border.
Some Serbs have expressed anger and said they feel betrayed by Vucic's about-face.
The demands were welcomed by the European Union as a positive move.
Tensions have been high in Kosovo since Pristina shut down several Serbian-backed parallel institutions at the end of August. Pristina calls the so-called "parallel" institutions backed by Belgrade "illegal."
Kurti said his own demands were "peaceful and rational" compared to those of the Serbian leader.
First among them are that Serbia hand over Milan Radoicic, who is wanted in Kosovo in connection with an armed attack in Banjska last year. Radoicic, the fugitive former vice president of the Serbian List party accused of leading and organizing the attack, is believed to be in Serbia.
Kosovar authorities last week announced the indictment of 45 individuals on terrorism charges over a commando-style operation at a monastery in northern Kosovo last year that killed an ethnic Albanian police officer and wounded another.
Kurti also said Kosovo wants an agreement on normalization of relations to be signed and it also wants the withdrawal of a letter from former Prime Minister Ana Brnabic rejecting Kosovo's independence and a seat for Kosovo at the United Nations.
Lajcak said Serbia had already withdrawn the letter, but Vucic neither confirmed nor denied this when he was asked about it last week.
Kosovo and Serbia have been negotiating normalization since 2011 through the Brussels dialogue, supervised by the EU. They reached an agreement on normalization steps in early 2023, but key elements of the deal remain unfulfilled. Kosovo insists that this agreement must be signed first, although the EU says it is binding on the parties regardless of signature.
Kosovo, which is majority ethnic Albanian, has faced increased criticism from international partners, including the United States and European Union, over "unilateral" and "uncoordinated" actions affecting the daily lives of its ethnic Serb minority.
Belgrade and EU and U.S. officials have also pressed for Pristina to lay the legal groundwork to establish an association of mostly Serb municipalities that it originally pledged to create more than a decade ago.
Kosovar officials have countered that the Serbian side is trying to implement measures halfway, including from oral commitments made in Ohrid early last year.