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Shala: Why an agreement with Serbia is necessary (Lajmi)

By   /  29/05/2018  /  No Comments

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Blerim Shala, advisor to Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, argues in an op-ed that Kosovo needs a legally-binding agreement with Serbia, which among other things will once and forever remove the state of Serbia from Kosovo. Shala writes: “Kosovo has been negotiating and talking to Serbia in one way or another for 21 years now. The two major agreements on Kosovo, the Rambouillet Agreement (1999) and the agreement of the Vienna Process (2006, 2007), through which Koosvo won its freedom and independence, were in reality agreements between Kosovo and the West (the international community) which were not accepted by Serbia, regardless of major changes in the central government in Belgrade. The only agreement accepted by both parties is the Brussels Agreement in 2013, which even at the time was seen as a prologue to a historical and political agreement which is now being called a legally-binding agreement. This brings us back to another question: whether Kosovo needs a final agreement with Serbia, or if we can continue to consolidate the state of Kosovo step by step, without any real chances of reaching a long-term sustainability for the state of Kosovo. To be frank, without such an agreement with Serbia, it is very difficult to achieve internal stability and secure an international perspective for the state of Kosovo … Kosovo needs a legally binding agreement with Serbia, to remove once and for all the state of Serbia from Kosovo, by enabling at the same time Serbia through the Ahtisaari Proposal and the Constitution of Kosovo to be interested in the rights and needs of the Serb community in Kosovo. Through this agreement, Serbia would prove to Brussels that it is no longer present with its structures in Kosovo and that it views its relations with Kosovo as good neighborly relations. These two achievements should pave way to Serbia’s membership of the European Union. There is no doubt, from Kosovo’s standpoint, that mutual recognition between the two countries would be the best and most sustainable way of creating new circumstances in relations between Kosovo and Serbia. Nevertheless, it seems that every Albanian politician that sets aside the daily preoccupation of an understandable competition to run the government, could very easily articulate the answer to questions related to the necessity of an agreement with Serbia”.

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