Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo’s Prime Minister, said on Wednesday the customs duties on goods from Serbia and Bosnia were not intended against their people but aimed to make both Belgrade and Sarajevo recognise Pristina’s independence declared in 2008, the Beta news agency reported.

He said Bosnia and Herzegovina was a country which deserved respect and partnership with Kosovo and “we want to make it easier for Bosnia to decide to recognise Kosovo since we don’t have any open issues and we don’t want to hurt it with this decision.”

“We want Serbia to recognise us after our step (to increase import tariffs to 100 percent), since it needs our market, and we need recognition,” Haradinaj said during the presentation of the Ministry of Regional Development report.

Haradinaj earlier said the import tariffs would remain in place until Belgrade recognised Kosovo’s independence and that they did not aim at frustrating the relations among peoples.

The European Union and the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) have repeatedly asked Pristina to revoke the decision on taxes, but Haradinaj has refused to make a move.

The EU agreed with Belgrade and some other countries that the tariffs violated CEFTA deals, and the bloc warned the decision was also contrary to the spirit of the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the bloc but did not make any concrete step.

Belgrade refrained from any countermeasures but lost an estimated 25.7 million Euros in export since early November and if the decision remained in place would probably suffer 65.5 million Euros loss at the end of the year.