Serbian President Boris Tadic will not meet with Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova on the sidelines of an international conference slated for early June in Geneva, Tadic's Press Relations Office said Friday.

"Representatives of interim Kosovo institutions are not authorized to represent the province at international conferences, because of which Rugova's appearance among other state leaders would represent a major precedent in international relations," said the office said in a statement.

The Serbian government has conveyed this stand to those proposing the meeting on the sidelines of the Geneva conference, according to the statement.

It said Tadic insists on opening a direct dialogue with Rugova either in Belgrade or in Pristina.

Kosovo, a province of Serbia, has been a de facto UN protectorate since 1999, when the NATO bombed Serbia for three months to force it withdraw its troops who were fighting an ethnic Albanian uprising.

Source: Xinhua