August 16 (SeeNews) - Serbia and Kosovo, its former province which declared independence in 2008, failed to reach an agreement on an international dialling code for the young country on Monday, after 20 hours of negotiations, the two countries said in separate statements.
Serbia, which continues to claim Kosovo is an integral part of its territory, has been delaying the process of granting it a new phone code, saying Kosovo has not implemented all the relevant agreements.
For land line calls to Kosovo from abroad, Serbia's country code, 381, should be dialled as calls from Serbia to Kosovo are charged as domestic calls.
For its part, the government in Pristina says the absence of a phone code has so far cost it about 200 million euro ($226 million).
Negotiations will resume shortly as the number of issues that need to be resolved has been brought down, the director the government's office for Kosovo and Metohija, Marko Gjuric said in a statement posted on Serbia's government's website.
To reach someone in Kosovo on his mobile phone, callers must dial the country code for either Monaco or Slovenia.
According to reports in local media, this costs Kosovo's largest mobile operator, Vala, 9 million euro annually, while the second biggest telecom company IPKO, pays 1 million euro per year for the service.
The negotiations for the phone code of the tiny newborn country have already lasted around five years. In January the two neighbouring countries agreed that Kosovo will obtain its own country code, 383, from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for both fixed and mobile operators as of March 1. Serbia, however, later said Kosovo had not met the necessary conditions.
Obtaining an international phone code from ITU enables the recognition of the country's sovereignty in the telecom sector, the Kosovo government has said, adding that a new code would make mobile services much cheaper for Kosovo citizens.
($=0.8815 euro)