Lasting solution for relations between Belgrade and Pristina, and Serbia’s agreement on the weakening of the Republic of Srpska will be Angela Merkle’s two key requests during her visit to Serbia.
Concretely, according to Blic’s findings, Germany requests that Serbia ‘in foreseeable future’ allows Kosovo’s membership in the United Nations and support constitutional reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would reduce influence of entities.
German Chancellor is visiting Belgrade on 7 July, and those two topics are at the top of the issues that will be presented to the Serbian leadership.
Berlin’s position is that Serbia’s green light for Kosovo in the UN would not not mean the recognition of unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo. This is supposed to be carried out following the model of ‘two Germanies’, from the time of the Cold War when Western Germany and Eastern Germany didn’t recognize each other, but both were represented in the UN. Merkel apparently requests UN membership for Kosovo since this is the only way forward for Kosovo to become a member of the Council of Europe, OSCE and the European Union. This would, in the same time, mean and final solution of the Kosovo issue, which threatens German interests in Balkans for decades. Second permanent source of instability in the region, Germans claim, is the position of the Republic of Srpska. From this reason Merkel will request from Serbia to agree on the weakening of the RS and clearly distance itself from Milorad Dodik, to oppose his aspirations for a referendum for separation and that RS agrees on constitutional amendments that would strengthen central intuitions in Sarajevo.
“We’ll see whether these two requests will be formalized now, during Merkel’s visit, or it will be postponed a bit. However there is no doubt that those two topics will appear on the table,” said analysts Djordje Vukadinovic and added that model of two Germanies was mentioned and by the former mediator Wolfgang Ischinger, even before Kosovo’s declaration of independence. Vukadinovic concluded that following the implementation of the Brussels Agreement it appears most certain that Dodik will be the next topic.
