Petkovic writes to Lajcak over Pristina's plan for collection of purported electricity debt

BELGRADE - The head of the Serbian government Office for Kosovo-Metohija Petar Petkovic has written to the EU special envoy for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue Miroslav Lajcak in stern protest over Pristina's plan to collect an electricity debt purportedly accumulated by four Serb-majority municipalities in the north of Kosovo-Metohija, diplomatic sources told Tanjug on Friday.

The so-called Kosovo's finance minister said on Thursday the alleged debt totalled almost 12 mln euros.

Pristina has announced the debt would be collected from the budgets of the four municipalities and a development fund for the north of Kosovo-Metohija.

In a letter to Lajcak, Petkovic wrote that Belgrade strongly opposed the scenario and demanded an urgent EU reaction to prevent Pristina from snatching the fund's monies.

He noted that allegations used by Pristina as the reasoning behind the decision were absolutely untrue and unfounded and that the very intent of seizing money from the fund unilaterally to use it for any purposes other than those envisioned by a 2013 agreement on customs tariffs and the development fund for the north of Kosovo-Metohija was the most brutal attack on the dialogue process and, in particular, the population of the four Serb-majority municipalities, for whose development the money in the fund was intended for.

Such developments would also directly jeopardise progress achieved in the energy sector, given that Elektrosever and KEDS signed on December 9 a commercial agreement regulating their relationship in business operations in the four municipalities, Petkovic noted.

Any redistribution of existing financial resources that runs counter to these objectives would represent a direct violation of the 2013 agreement, Petkovic wrote.

"With all of the above in mind, and perhaps more importantly, the announced collection of the purported electricity debt from monies in the Fund for the North is yet another in a series of unilateral, illegal and illegitimate decisions by the interim authorities in Pristina and, as such, represents a direct and gross violation of the 2013 Customs Tariffs Agreement," he warned.