Chollet: Kosovo must give its ethnic Serbs greater autonomy

Chollet, who stayed in the region during the 1990s as a part of the team of then Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, visited Belgrade and Pristina for the first time this week, now in the capacity of a special adviser to the State Department, KoSSev media outlet reported.
In an interview with the Financial Times, this official described the “step by step” approach as a potential path to progress in the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, or as a solution.
The first step would be for Serbia and Kosovo to normalise relations, even without full mutual recognition, as other countries have done, Chollet said, as carried by this media outlet.

While the Serbs will eventually have to accept a certain level of sovereignty, Kosovo must give its ethnic Serb citizens greater autonomy, especially the formal Community of Serb-majority municipalities in the north of Kosovo, the Financial Times further reported.

After the latest tensions in the north of Kosovo, Chollet said that the US is intensifying diplomatic pressure on Belgrade and Pristina to prevent “violence from metastasising”.
“The last thing any of us wants right now is a crisis in this part of the world, given that we have the biggest crisis since World War II not far from us”, Chollet was quoted as saying.
He also said that the US does not want crisis diplomacy, but rather that Belgrade and Pristina start concluding an agreement based on the proposal of the European Union.