Lessons to learn from diplomatic failures (Koha Ditore)
Augustin Palokaj, the paper’s Brussels-based correspondent, writes that last week was quite an eventful one for Kosovo in the international scene with three interlinked events happening around the same time. The first was the meeting of Kosovo and Serbia Prime Ministers in Brussels as part of the EU-facilitated dialogue for normalization of relations; the second was the voting of the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee on a Kosovo report; and finally, the voting of the draft resolution on Kosovo by the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE). All three events, in Palokaj’s view, demonstrated how disorganized Kosovo’s foreign policy is and how amateur most of the Albanian-speaking media outlets are. Of all the above events, Council of Europe’s resolution received the most media attention although its significance is minor compared to that of other international organisations, writes Palokaj. “Not that the Council of Europe is not important but definitely not as important as the European Parliament.” Why is it then that the PACE resolution got so much media coverage, asks Palokaj. According to Palokaj, the explanation is that the media simply published information fed to them by Albanian politicians, especially by those taking part in the work of the Parliamentary Assembly. These politicians have created high expectations that they will succeed in pushing their own amendments to the CoE draft resolution and overthrow those of Serbia. At the end of the day, they have failed to materialize their promises and the amendments proposed by Serbia, including one calling for an increase of UNMIK’s role in Kosovo, have passed. However, Palokaj says the resolution will have no effect in Kosovo, including the section related to UNMIK's role. In contrast to the PACE resolution, a very favorable report on Kosovo was approved by the European Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee calling on EU member states to recognize the independence of Kosovo. Be as it may, Kosovo should learn a lesson in diplomacy from last week’s events, claims Palokaj.