Serbian and Kosovo negotiators who on Saturday reached a deal on an ethnic dispute over the movement of citizens across their border are yet to resolve the burning issue of licence plates.

“We have a deal,” European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a tweet yesterday. “Under the EU-facilitated Dialogue, Serbia agreed to abolish entry/exit documents for Kosovo ID holders and Kosovo agreed to not introduce them for Serbian ID holders.”

“Kosovo Serbs, as well as all other citizens, will be able to travel freely between Kosovo & Serbia using their ID cards. The EU just received guarantees from PM (Albin) Kurti to this end,” he wrote.

Serbia and Kosovo are yet to reach agreement on the hotly contested use of Serbian licence plates by Kosovo Serbs.

Pristina has asked Kosovo Serbs to replace those plates with Kosovo licence place, a measure reciprocal to Belgrade’s policy towards Kosovo. However, this caused riots in the north of Kosovo in late July, with local Serbs blocking roads and occasionally clashing with police until NATO peace-keeping forces intervened to lift the blockades.

Acting under pressure from the United States, the Kosovo government moved the entry into force of its decision from 1 August to 1 September.

Talks between EU and US envoys and Serbian and Kosovo officials on licence plates have not yielded any results so far.

Earlier in the day, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic expressed hope the EU would provide guarantees for the agreement on personal documents.

He also said that Serbia would publish a disclaimer stating that Priština’s decision to allow the use of ID cards was adopted for practical reasons, with the aim of facilitating the freedom of movement, but that it did not imply the recognition of Kosovo’s independence.

This dispute stems from predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008, something Belgrade has refused to recognise.

Kosovo has been recognised by the United States and all but five EU member countries, however, a number of other countries, including Russia and China, have not done it.

Belgrade and Kosovo’s Serb minority concentrated in the country’s north claim entitlement under a 2013 agreement to an association of semi-autonomous majority-Serb municipalities, which Pristina has refused to implement.