Kosovo says close to reaching accord with Serbia to boost ties

Kosovo said on Thursday, March 14 it was close to reaching an accord with Serbia to improve relations, with the European Union's foreign policy chief visiting both capitals to press for a deal that would open the door to membership talks with Serbia, according to Reuters.

Serbia does not recognize Kosovo's 2008 secession, but is under pressure from the European Union to improve ties and help overcome a de facto ethnic partition between Kosovo's Albanian majority and a small Serb pocket in the north.

"Right now we are at the beginning of the end in reaching an agreement to normalize relations between the state of Kosovo and Serbia," Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci told reporters after meeting EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton in Pristina.

"We're optimistic that things are moving in the right direction," he said, in the most positive comments from the former guerrilla commander in months of negotiations with Serbia.

Ashton left for Belgrade to meet Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and did not speak to media.

She has been mediating talks between Dacic and Thaci since late 2012, as the European Union pushes to establish functional, neighborly relations between Serbia and Kosovo five years after the former province declared independence with the backing of the West.

The shuttle diplomacy comes with the clock ticking down to an April 16 progress report on the negotiations.

That report will decide whether the bloc launches accession talks with Serbia in June, a process that would drive reform and send a message of stability to investors interested in the biggest economy in the former Yugoslavia.