[size=85:3pgnuz3h]Thu, Aug 25 2011 16:14 CET Sofia Echo
Bulgarian firms among exporters to benefit from Kosovo trade embargo on Serbia

Seven hundred Bulgarian companies reportedly are taking serious steps to enter the Kosovo market, as a number of countries in South Eastern Europe take advantage of Priština’s trade embargo on Serbia.

An August 25 2011 report in Belgrade daily Blic said that Serbia’s economy stood to lose $250 million by the end of the year because of the trade embargo, imposed by Kosovo in retaliation for Serbia’s embargo.

On August 11, Bulgarian Minister of Agriculture and Food Miroslav Naidenov and Kosovo deputy prime minister and trade and industry minister Mimoza Kusari-Lila, who was on a visit to Sofia, discussed opportunities for Bulgaria to export 300 million euro worth of food products to Kosovo, Naidenov’s ministry said.

Kusari-Lila said that 80 per cent of the deficit that Kosovo needed to make up was in agricultural and food products, while construction materials made up the rest.

Kosovo needed, among other things, grain, cooking oil, flour, bread and dairy products, biscuits and sugar products.

Given that it was not a long distance from Sofia and Priština, Bulgaria was a suitable partner to help address Kosovo’s food deficit, she said.

Naidenov, accompanied by a business delegation from Bulgaria’s agricultural sector, visited Kosovo on August 17.

According to Blic, companies from Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia and Turkey already have begun taking advantage of the ban on import of Serbian goods imposed by authorities in Priština.

The standoff between Serbia and Kosovo about customs and border issues led to violence in July, including the death of Kosovo police officer Enver Zymberi, when Kosovo sought to take control of the Jarinje and Brnjak border checkpoints.

Kosovo, reportedly, lacked trust in the ethnic Serb police who were staffing the border post, suspecting that they were not enforcing the embargo. Ethnic Serbs are the majority in northern Kosovo.

Around the same time, dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo on technical issues was broken off, but is set to resume in September. The crisis in July led to EU calls for issues to be resolved through dialogue, and led Nato to strengthen its Kfor peacekeeping force in Kosovo.

With a recent round of recognitions by some African countries, a total of 80 countries, among them the United States and 22 out of 27 European Union states, including Bulgaria, recognise Kosovo as independent.

Serbia, backed by Russia, China and a number of other countries, rejects the February 2008 declaration of independence in Priština as illegitimate, even though the International Court of Justice has said that in its opinion, there was no fault in international law with the independence declaration.