Kosovo will accept "European" solutions for Serbian border

(LJUBLJANA) - Kosovo will accept all "European" solutions for the control of its border with Serbia as it wants to join the EU, Foreign Minister Enver Hoxhaj said here Monday ahead of fresh talks in Brussels.

"Kosovo is working very hard to have a European future therefore we will accept all solutions that are European solutions," he said in English during a joint news conference with his Slovenian counterpart Samuel Zbogar.

Speaking just hours before a fresh round of technical talks between Serbia and Kosovo in Brussels, Hoxhaj said Pristina was ready to accept "integrated border management, which is actually a model that is functioning between different European states."

"Integrated border management" was expected to be discussed in Brussels as a means to end tensions, by placing disputed border posts under the joint management of Serbia and Kosovo, with members of the European rule of law mission Eulex -- combining officials and police -- overseeing the posts.

The EU-sponsored talks collapsed in September when ethnic Serbs in northern Kosovo resisted the presence of officials from Pristina at a common border crossing.

"For Kosovo the border in the north (with Serbia) is the border of an independent state," Hoxhaj said.

"We will do our part of the work, we are seriously committed in the dialogue," he said, although he ruled out any "changing of the borders."

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority unilaterally proclaimed independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade and the Serbs of northern Kosovo have rejected the move and still considers it as its southern province.

Ethnic Serbs dominate northern Kosovo.