Serbia should not agree with the formation of the Kosovo army even at the cost of EU integration, said former US ambassador to Serbia William Montgomery.
“Enough is enough”, Montgomery answered when asked by Tanjug how he sees messages delivered to Belgrade by US State Department official Wess Mitchel, including the open support of the US to the Kosovo Army.
The situation in the Balkans was in focus of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on the sidelines of the 72nd session of the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.
“We hail any opportunity to hear your opinion about the developments in the regions, to coordinate our further steps on matters of concern for us and in the interests of stability in the Balkans and development of the countries of the region in conformity with the will of their peoples,” Lavrov said.
Following the announcement of internal dialogue on Kosovo, Albanian lobbyists are busily preparing a resolution for the UN in order to give Kosovo a chair.
According to Sputnik, lobbyists in America are working on the draft, helped by the Clinton Foundation, and their plan is for Kosovo to gain the status of “an observer state,” modeled after Palestine.
The new US administration has not yet formulated a policy towards the Western Balkans, and the European Union is running out of “carrots” to motivate the Balkan countries in the implementation of reforms, and again European integration, with Russian obstructions, still remains the best way for the region – US analysts said on Monday on the panel “Western Balkans – Delicate Balance” at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
The Western Balkan countries are poorer than they were 30 years ago, which is why they will need at least 25 years to reach the EU and therefore Germany has submitted a plan “Berlin process plus”, said project director for the Balkans at the European Institute CIFE in Nice and member of the Advisory group for the Balkan policy in Europe (BiEPAG) Tobias Flessenkemper for the RFE/RL.
He adds that it is still anything but on the level of ideas.
Struggling against Euroscepticism in Western Europe, the EU is seeking to reinvent itself with expansion to the East that threatens the stability of the Balkans, analyst Igor Pshenichnikov warns.
Amid rising Euroscepticism in Western Europe, the EU is focused on eastern enlargement, but its desire to “relaunch” the European project depends on pressuring eastern European countries into making painful concessions, such as the demand on Serbia to give up sovereignty over Kosovo.
A delegation of Serbia’s National Assembly on Thursday left a session of the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly, held in Strasbourg, France, in protest.
The move was prompted by the decision of a French court earlier in the day to reject Serbia’s request to extradite Ramush Haradinaj.
According to a statement, the Serbian delegation “condemned the disgraceful decision of the French court.”
There is no word from Brussels how the suspension of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue following Ramus Haradinaj’s “arrest” might have on Serbia’s EU integration.
Serbia’s chief negotiator with the EU, Tanja Miscevic, said this on Monday.
Former Enlargement Commissioner Štefan Füle told an audience today (7 December) that if the EU distances itself from the Western Balkans, other geopolitical players will immediately seize the opportunity to assert their influence over the region.
The ex-Commissioner, who now works as a special envoy to the Balkans for the Czech ministry of foreign affairs, spoke to the BALKANS – boosting connections on the road to the EU conference, organised by the Friends of Europe, a Brussels think tank.
Kosovo is demonstrating functional non-viability as a state, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.