US National Security Advisor John Bolton. Photo: Martial Trezzini/EPA

US President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, said on Friday that Washington will not weigh in on the controversial idea of a territorial swap between Serbia and its former province of Kosovo.

“The US policy is that if the two parties can work it out between themselves and reach agreement, we don’t exclude territorial adjustments,” he said in Kiev, Ukraine, on Friday.

“We would not stand in the way, and I don’t think anybody in Europe would stand in the way if the two parties to the dispute reached a mutually satisfactory settlement,” Bolton added.

Bolton is the highest ranked US official to address the topic of partition, which gained momentum after the US ambassador to Kosovo, Greg Delawie, showed reluctance to definitively say whether a territory swap was acceptible to Washington.

Bolton spoke out against Kosovo’s 2008 unilateral declaration of independance long before he became Trump’s National Security Advisor.

The US and most EU countries acknowledge Kosovo’s independance within its existing borders. However, Serbia does not – and maintains control over the mostly-Serb populated far north of the country.

Serbia’s leadership, including President Aleksandar Vucic, is thought to be pushing for a territorial swap as a way to finally resolve the dispute and so move on with Serbia’s EU membership aspiration. But the idea has met with disproval from the Serbian opposition, many Kosovo Serbs, and from German Chancellor Angela Merkel as well.

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