A senior U.S. official on March 13 urged Kosovo and Serbia to make tough decisions to restart talks and “move forward” on normalizing ties.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar met with officials in Kosovo in the latest American effort to restart the talks between the two countries after Kosovo made a controversial decision to ban ethnic Serbs in its territory from using the Serbian currency, the dinar.
The central bank’s ban sparked new tensions and threatened to cause chaos in minority Serbian areas, where the dinar is widely used to pay pensions and salaries to staff in Serbian-run institutions, including schools and hospitals.
Five EU members—Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Romania, and Slovakia—do not recognize Kosovo, which was a former Serbian province until a 78-day NATO bombing campaign in 1999 ended a war between Serbian government forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo and pushed Serbian forces out. Belgrade still considers Kosovo a Serbian province.
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