On the fifth anniversary of the first agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, Vetevendosje leader Albin Kurti says the deal laid the groundwork for the Association/Community of Serb-majority municipalities which, according to him, enables Belgrade to have control over predominantly Serb municipalities in Kosovo. Kurti says that there is unanimous opposition in Kosovo to the establishment of the Association/Community and that the six-year-long dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia did not result in any sort of normalization. “Serbia is not a normal country because it considers Kosovo as its own and has not faced its crimes from the past,” Kurti writes adding however that Kosovo is not a normal country either because it has a “divided Mitrovica” and “social despair”. Kurti considers that the new dialogue should not begin without three conditions being met first: an official assessment of the dialogue from 2011 to 2017 as well as submitting Thaci-Dacic agreement to the Venice Commission; open, democratic and comprehensive discussions on the future principles and format of the dialogue; and national consensus on the composition of the negotiating team, its mandate and the dialogue strategy. Finally, Kurti notes, the agreement would have to be put to a referendum.
