Admiral James Foggo, the US Navy admiral who leads NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command, urged Kosovo and Serbia’s leaders to emulate the example set by Greece and North Macedonia’s premiers in their historic deal to overcome their longstanding dispute and secure a breakthrough agreement.

“What we need now is the kind of compromise and sacrifice that Prime Ministers Alexis Tsipras and Zoran Zaev achieved with the Prespa agreement,” Foggo told BIRN in an interview at the Pristina headquarters of NATO's Kosovo force, KFOR.

Foggo argued that Kosovo should remove the 100 per cent tariffs that it imposed last November on imported Serbian goods, which caused the EU-mediated Pristina-Belgrade talks in Brussels to stall.

He also said that both sides need to leave behind past differences and move towards the reconciliation of the two countries and ethnicities. “Any attempt to block the dialogue or annihilate it will not lead to any best outcome for both sides,” he explained.