BELGRADE - Monday's meeting between the Serbian and Albanian prime ministers, Aleksandar Vucic and Edi Rama respectively, is a missed opportunity for improving the relations between the two countries, as the Albanian prime minister evidently did not resist the nationalist impulse, political analyst Predrag Simic noted.

Simic, Serbia's former ambassador to France, described Rama's call on Serbia to recognize the independence of Kosovo-Metohija as a diplomatic incident, and underscored that the Albanian prime minister's behavior during the joint press conference was worse than the biggest skeptics had expected.

After the recent incident during the Serbia-Albania football match when the drone appeared above the pitch carrying the symbols of a Greater Albania, it could have been expected for the Albanian prime minister to try to ease the tensions and demonstrate his statesmanship, Simic said.

“After today's incident, it seems to me that Rama does not come across as a man who is able to resist this nationalist impulse. On the other hand, I do not see how the relations between the Serbs and Albanians, which were at a low level even before this visit, nearly at zero level, could now recover,” Simic said in a statement to Tanjug.

“I think that this was an opportunity for a political message that the Albanians in the Balkans are sure, self-confident at the moment and that Edi Rama is taking on the characteristics of a pro-Albanian leader, and from that viewpoint Belgrade was an ideal place for that,” he said.

Simic expects that the West will interpret the incident caused by the Albanian prime minister exactly as Rama wanted.

“Maybe, there will be certain greater caution, but one should not expect that the West will at all react to the Albanian prime minister's statements in Belgrade,” Simic concluded.