Advisor to the Kosovo President Blerim Shala told the RTK2, (the Show “Poglavlje” (Chapter)), that “the momentum of the historic agreement between Kosovo and Serbia must be defined,” and that there must be a time limit for the talks.
“In principle, we have to agree that something that remained, we have to end once and for all”.
“It is a momentum that is being built and that has taken a swing and in Serbia now, and it has existed for a long time in Kosovo, although I must sincerely acknowledge that dialogue in Kosovo is not popular at all. And we have a deficit in establishing a consensus on the Kosovo political scene for the realization of the dialogue. In the temporal aspect, the boundaries of this agreement are measured in the best variant with a few years,” says Shala.
The core of the historical dispute between Serbs and Albanians, says Shala, lies “in the relation Kosovo-Serbia”.
“The normalization of the relations between Kosovo and Serbia will be extremely important for the stability of the region,” he adds, and at the same time emphasizes that the normalization of Serbian-Albanian relations is not possible if:
“Under one – we deal too much with history, two – if we skip the factor Kosovo and factor Pristina”.
“If an appropriate agreement between Kosovo and Serbia is established, it will have an impact on the overall Albanian-Serbian relations, but that must be mutual. So we cannot have an Albanian-Serbian relationship and skip the relationship between Kosovo and Serbia,” he adds.
Shala also said that there is no dilemma about what should be the perspective of both Kosovo and the Western Balkans.
“I do not see the perspective of Serbia and Kosovo, except integration into the EU. In the case of Kosovo, we certainly have the pretensions to become a member of the NATO Pact,” Shala concluded.
Blerim Shala points out that the Agreement on the ZSO has been signed by Serbia and Kosovo in 2015 and that everyone is aware what happened in the meantime, about it and about the assessment of the constitutionality of this agreement.
“This is now our obligation, now we go with the process of writing the Community Statute; it is the basis of the process, which should go over the team for drafting that should cooperate with the Kosovo institutions and the OSCE mission. This is not an easy process, but we seek what Serbia is asking too, to overcome technical problems and to finish this as soon as possible, to know where we are,” said Shala.
“KSF is a change of name, not a major change in the essence, they have military uniforms and weapons, we have 103 Kosovo Serbs who are already part of the KSF, and there will be much more when the armed forces of Kosovo are created.”
Regarding the formation of the Kosovo Army, Shala said:
“We have our agenda, we want to form the Kosovo Armed Forces, transform the Security Forces through a serious dialogue with the Serbian List, which is part of Kosovo’s institutions,” said Blerim Shala, adding that “there are no reasons to not discuss these issues because this is of common interest. You remember when we formed the Kosovo Police, it started in ’99, then it was difficult to persuade the Kosovo Serbs to be part of the police, then they left the police in northern Kosovo in 2008 because they realized that Kosovo’s security is mutual thing. Now we sit together in parliament, Customs, we vote together, soon we will be together in courts, why not we have common security forces,” asks Blerim Shala.
Shala says that constitutional amendments to the Armed Forces are ready, and that NATO and KFOR will participate in the process, which in 2014 gave Kosovo a green light for the Armed Forces.
“The armed forces will function under the multi-ethnic system and will be under the full control of NATO and KFOR,” the advisor to the Kosovo President concludes.
