Pristina marks the day with marches by its security forces as the EU announces new normalization talks
17 Feb. () –
Kosovo celebrates 15 years this Friday since its declaration of independence without signs of an immediate solution to the open conflict with Serbia on February 17, 2008, as demonstrated by the latest succession of crises that led to the withdrawal of the Kosovo Serbs from the institutions and the erection of protest barricades by this population, the majority in northern Kosovo, against what they perceive as a policy of harassment by the Government of Pristina.
Despite the distance that separates the parties, the European Union maintains its mediation efforts. This same Friday, Brussels has announced that the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, and the Kosovar Prime Minister, Albin Kurti, will meet next Monday, February 27, in the European city with the top diplomat of the EU, Josep Borrell, in a new diplomatic normalization effort that Serbian nationalism considers intolerable, as hundreds of people demonstrated last Wednesday with a demonstration through the streets of Belgrade in which they even insulted the Serbian president.
On the table right now is an eleven-point international plan that contemplates the establishment of a confederation of the Kosovo Serb populations of northern Kosovo (the so-called Community of Serb Municipalities) in what could be understood as a partition of the self-proclaimed republic and that will be the dominant theme in the conversation on the 27th in Brussels.
In this sense, the international mediators, led by the European Union and the United States, have qualified that this new status will be discussed with both parties to iron out even the slightest rough edges, but they have already warned, as the Department’s advisor anticipated in January. of State of the United States, Derek Chollet, that Serbia and Kosovo must prepare to adopt “difficult decisions that will require political courage”.
Kurti and Vucic have accepted, at least, to sit down to discuss a process of which all the details are not yet known. The United States, as reported at the time by sources in the Swiss newspaper ‘Neue Zürcher Zeitung’ close to the talks, contemplates a future in which Serbia recognizes Kosovo in exchange for greater autonomy for the Kosovo Serb population, but Washington is also recommended to the European Union to make a move when discussing the integration process with Kurti and Vucic to prevent Russia and China from gaining diplomatic ground.
EXALTATIONS AND PROTESTS
For the rest, Kosovo commemorated its independence this Friday with a parade of the security forces chaired by Prime Minister Kurti with a speech full of patriotic exaltations and allusions to a “glorious past”, full of “martyrs throughout the ages”. centuries”, reports Kosova Press.
In contrast, hundreds of Serb ultranationalists repudiated any idea that minimally recognizes the existence of Kosovo as an independent entity. “Kosovo is the heart of Serbia,” some of those present proclaimed on Wednesday, according to the national media, during a march led by the far-right and pro-Russian formation of the Popular Patrols.
Its leader, Damjan Knezevic, was arrested during the police operation carried out a day later against the organizers of the march, whose leaders even surrounded the Presidential Palace in Belgrade, according to the Balkan news service of the US international radio station Radio Free Liberty.
Vucic, on his way to the Munich Security Conference, limited himself to announcing to the population that “in a period of seven days there will be good news regarding Kosovo and Metohija”, in reference to the historical name that the Serbian government uses to identify what it continues to understand as its province.
In addition to all this, it remains to be seen how the talks will affect the postponed local elections in Kosovo, one of the catalysts for the latest crisis, while the majority Kosovar Serb party, Lista Serbia, outside the institutions, maintains that “the situation of the Serbs in Kosovo is worse than ever”, in the words of its vice president, Dalibor Jevtic, in statements to B92.
“Everything that has happened since Albin Kurti came to power has been aimed at denying the rights of Kosovo Serbs,” he added. “The fact that right now Kosovar Serbs are not represented in the institutions suggests how things are right now,” he added.
