Signature on Kosovo: When difficult – there is Maja (Blic)
If extraordinary parliamentary elections don’t take place, incumbent Serbian Government will be faced with signing of a legally binding agreement with Pristina.
Intention of the West, with this document, is to enable Kosovo‘s membership in the UN, Council of Europe, OSCE and other international organizations.
New agreement with Pristina, dubbed ‘Brussels 2’, which would have a weight of an international agreement, is envisaged by the European Union’s Strategic Framework for negotiations with Serbia and could be signed until the end of negotiations. Whereas, Serbian Government’s goal is that Serbia becomes ‘ready for membership until the end of 2018’.
It is not a secret that West’s goal is that Kosovo becomes a UN member, and Serbian leadership is well aware of this.
Even though Western sources claim that allowing Pristina into the UN would not mean that Belgrade has formally recognized unilaterally declared independence, following the model of ‘two Germanies’, it is clear that a very bitter pill has been prepared for Serbia.
Responsibility for accepting such agreement could be shared by all institutions, from the Government, through the National Assembly to the President of the Republic, but who will be the one to place a signature for Kosovo becoming a UN member?
Blic’s sources assessed that those would be, in case that extraordinary elections don’t take place, Aleksandar Vucic or Ivica Dacic. However, it is possible that responsibility is shifted to the Assembly Speaker Maja Gojkovic.
‘Legally and formally, the President of the state, Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister are entitled to take over any international obligation. Their signature, as stipulated by the Vienna Convention, is considered obligatory for Serbia,” explained lawyer Dragan Popovic from the Center for Practical Policy.
When asked whether the government could shift the responsibility to anyone else, for example to Gojkovic, Popovic said that it is legally possible.
“Of course, Serbian Government, can authorize and any other person, even the Assembly Speaker, to sign this agreement. However, due to the significance and sensibility of the topic, it is most likely that it will be Vucic or Dacic,” concluded Popovic.
Djorjde Vukadinovic from the New Serbian Political Thinking said to Blic that Vucic is the most serious candidate.
‘If it really comes to ‘Brussels 2’, I think that Prime Minister won’t manage to avoid the glass of bile. Nikolic will hardly agree, from various reasons. Dacic could formally sing it, Gojkovic too, but they don’t have the political weight,” said Vukadinovic.