Murphy and Peters: Kosovo must implement peace agreement with Serbia before joining NATO

Kosovo must implement the Western-brokered peace agreement with Serbia if it wants to achieve its goal of joining the NATO military alliance, two visiting U.S. senators said in Pristina on Monday, Reuters reported.

U.S. Democratic Senators Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Gary Peters, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, urged the two countries to move quickly on the agreement brokered by the European Union in March. They are part of a congressional delegation visiting the Balkans.

"The path (for Kosovo) into NATO and the European Union goes through an agreement with Serbia. That is a hard fact," Murphy told reporters at the U.S. Embassy in Pristina.

Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, is not recognized as a state by four NATO members: Romania, Spain, Greece and Slovakia. Murphy said those four countries could be persuaded to accept Kosovo into NATO if differences with Serbia are resolved.

"That depends on whether this agreement is reached and implemented," he said.

Despite the March agreement on normalizing relations, there has been no progress on the ground, especially in northern Kosovo, where around 50,000 Serbs still do not accept Kosovo's statehood. Washington is Kosovo's biggest supporter, politically and financially. There are currently around 4,000 NATO troops in Kosovo, 600 of whom are from the United States.