Today’s opinion piece in Gazeta Blic, comes as a rebuttal of the Head of the National Council of the Initiative for Kosovo (NISMA), Jakup Krasniqi to the statement of the President of the Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Wolfgang Petritsch. The latter reportedly told Tanjug news agency that the way members of the Serb community feel will be a benchmark of Kosovo’s progress. Krasniqi is surprised that an experienced politician who used to be EU’s Special Envoy for Kosovo, EU chief negotiator at the Kosovo peace talks in Rambouillet and Paris and then High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, could make such statement. According to Krasniqi, it is difficult to please a community which is directly influenced by Belgrade politics. The most recent proof he notes, is the campaign against Kosovo’s membership at UNESCO. “I simply doubt that the other communities in Kosovo, be them minority or not would “feel good” depending on “the feeling good” of the Serb minority. There is no doubt that it would be normal for all Kosovo citizens to feel good, be them from Serb community, other minority communities, or majority, stresses Krasniqi, but there should not be privileged communities which automatically discriminates the others. “History in Balkans has proved this several times; therefore we should all feel good and not only in Kosovo. Furthermore, why shouldn’t the others in Serbia, FYROM or other countries of the region feel good?” asks Krasniqi adding that if asked when would Albanians in these countries “feel good” they would most probably respond that they would feel so in a united Albania. “However, this will was limited with the document which derived from the discussions in Vienna, which was a compromise to make all citizens of Kosovo “feel good.”
Finally, Krasniqi says, the question is if those who were privileged for decades as a federal unit and who caused four wars to keep those privileges, would “feel good” to be equal with the others. “Therefore, I cannot believe that Kosovo’s progress can be measured with how good Serbs feel,” concludes Krasniqi.
