After the cancellation of a handball tournament that was for months pre-arranged, subsequently it was assessed that it could be interpreted as recognition of Kosovo’s independence, followed also by a strain on the organization of the internal dialogue in Mitrovica North, reports today broadcaster N1.
The Kosovo authorities banned the Director of the Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric and the Secretary General of the President of Serbia Nikola Selakovic to enter Kosovo, but from Belgrade there are announcements that they still will travel to Kosovo.
Just a few minutes after he finished talking with his Kosovo counterpart, the Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, in his TV talk, touched and the topic of cancellation of the junior handball game and the decision of the Kosovo authorities not to allow Nikola Selakovic and Marko Djuric to participate in the internal dialogue in Mitrovica North.
“I tell you, you will give it. Give or not, they will take part in North Mitrovica, let’s see what you will do on that matter,” said Aleksandar Vucic.
Persuasion with Pristina, says the president of the assembly committee for Kosovo and Metohija, Milovan Drecun, is not a provocation at all, because Serbia, as he claims, has the right and wants to include Serbs from Kosovo in the internal dialogue.
“Serbia wants to hear the opinion of its people in Kosovo and Metohija, why someone would prevent it, so they speak about the freedom of movement and then they prevent people from the state administration from going and talking with our people. The whole story must be turned around; we provoke nobody, we simply protect our interests, but we will not allow anyone to provoke us and endanger our interest in the worst way,” Drecun said.
The cancellation of the match and the announcement of departure to Mitrovica, despite the ban by Kosovo authorities, in Brussels are treated as an event for the local public, estimate Boban Stojanovic from the Faculty of Political Science in Belgrade.
“I am pretty sure that if from Brussels they would say that a game is to be played or that Djuric and Selakovic should not go, it would not have happened. The issue of internal dialogue should of course be conducted in North Mitrovica, and to me it is completely logical that Selakovic and Djuric want to go, however, somewhere here the influence of Serbia is shown and whether it exists, because they can prohibit you from entering Kosovo and thereby show Serbia where our position is in all of this” says Stojanovic.
