Germany’s Scholz urges Kosovo, Serbia to commit to dialogue

By FLORENT BAJRAMI and LLAZAR SEMINI
Associated Press

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has asked Kosovo and Serbia  for a clear commitment to reaching a political solution to their long-standing dispute over Kosovo’s independence. Normalization talks facilitated by the European Union started 11 years ago but yielded little impact, and tensions between the former opponents in war remain. Scholz was in Kosovo on Friday to start a multi-nation trip in the Western Balkans. He said Russia’s war in Ukraine made the region’s stability even more important. Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, declared independence in 2008, a decade after a brutal 1998-1999 war between separatist ethnic Albanian rebels and Serb forces.