In an article he wrote for NIN magazine on the anniversary of the assassination of Serbia's first democratic prime minister, Zoran Djinjdic, Dacic said Kosovo had been a taboo in the Serbian public for nearly ten years and that no one was allowed to say the truth.

"There were lies that Kosovo was ours and this was even officially confirmed by the Constitution. Today this very Constitution isn't helping at all. Serbia's president can't go to Kosovo. Neither can the prime minister. Nor the ministers. Nor the police. Nor the army," Dacic wrote, adding that Kosovo Serbs were deprived of many rights.

"They are only allowed to leave Kosovo at any moment. That's how much it is ours and that's how much our Constitution and our laws apply there," he wrote.

According to Dacic, "it is terribly important that we have realised, like Djindic did, that we simply must say these facts about Kosovo" because of "the still unfinished business of defining our own territory, of establishing Serbia's actual borders" as well as because of attempts to ensure a normal and safe life and a clear future for the Serbs in Kosovo.

Recalling that he had been in the government that tried to solve the problems in Kosovo through war, Dacic said that "perhaps there is some justice in the fact that today I am most responsible for a peaceful solution, a negotiated solution that envisages that everyone will lose something. And for openly saying so."

In Brussels, under the European Union's auspices, Dacic is negotiating with Kosovo PM Hashim Thaci a solution to the problems faced by the Serb community in Kosovo as well as solutions to the many technical, economic and political issues burdening Belgrade-Pristina relations.

Visible progress in the normalisation of relations is a prerequisite for progress in the European integration of both Serbia and Kosovo. Serbia expects a positive progress report from the European Commission in April based on which it hopes to be given in June a date for the start of accession negotiations.