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| - After cementing his party's rule in a landslide victory Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic will on Monday begin a series of meetings aimed at rebooting frozen talks with former war foe Kosovo. The conflict is one of Europe's most intractable territorial disputes, with Serbia refusing to accept the independence its former province declared after breaking away in a bloody war in the late 1990s. Thanks to a boosted parliamentary majority after Sunday's electoral win, Vucic now has broader reign to tackle the highly sensitive issue, according to analysts. With help from a partial opposition boycott, Vucic's centre-right Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) took home more than 62 percent of the vote, followed by its traditional junior coalition partner with around 10 percent. It is the biggest victory yet for a party which has been in power since 2012. The 50-year-old president already has a busy week ahead. On Monday he will host European Union special envoy Miroslav Lajcak, who is focused on resuming the Brussels-led dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina that has been on pause for well over a year. Next Vucic will on Wednesday pay a visit to his key ally on the Kosovo issue, Russia, before heading to Washington DC to meet Kosovo representatives at the White House. The Serbian leader has already warned of "difficult days and weeks ahead of us, in particularly related to Kosovo." But he has assured the public that Serbia's recognition of Kosovo will "not be a topic" of the Washington summit. "We will not allow it," he told local media. Before Belgrade, EU envoy Lajcak stopped in Pristina to meet with a new government who recently complied with Western pressure to scrap trade barriers on Serbian goods that had been thwarting the resumption of talks. After his trip Lajcak said he believed "the conditions are now in place" for the EU-led dialogue to continue. He declined to comment on the White House meeting on June 27, which was organised by Washington envoy Richard Grenell. The American, appointed by US President Donald Trump, has ruffled feathers in Europe for his brash style, and for appearing to overshadow the EU-led process to normalise relations between Serbian and Kosovo. But in an interview with local Kosovo outlet Gazeta Express, Grenell said the White House meeting would focus mainly on building more economic ties. He also denied speculation that Trump was looking for a "quick deal" to boost his fortunes ahead of US elections. Serbia effectively lost control over Kosovo in 1999, when NATO bombed Serb troops to halt their fighting with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian separatists. More than 13,000 died in the war, mostly Kosovo Albanians, who form a majority in the former province. ssm/ lc
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