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A new attempt at consultation will take place this Thursday in Brussels between Belgrade and Pristina. Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, called on leaders to be “constructive”, but they expect “difficult discussions”.
The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo continued a dialogue of the deaf in Brussels on Wednesday after the violence at the end of July, with NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg calling on them after separate talks for “restraint” and “good faith”, to “prevent further escalation”.
“I call on all parties to show restraint and avoid violence,” Jens Stoltenberg told reporters, warning that NATO’s peacekeeping force in Kosovo (Kfor) was “ready to intervene if stability were threatened”, in order to ensure “freedom of movement for all the inhabitants” of the former Serbian province.
The Secretary General of the Alliance spoke with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic then with Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti, two weeks before the entry into force of new administrative and border rules imposed by Pristina. The latter led to a new episode of strong tensions at the end of July in northern Kosovo where the Serbian minority considers them vexatious.
“We don’t agree on almost any point”
While a new attempt at consultation will take place this Thursday in Brussels within the framework of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue facilitated by the EU since 2011, Jens Stoltenberg called on them “to show flexibility and to be constructive”.
Serbian Aleksandar Vucic told the press to expect “difficult discussions”. “We don’t agree on almost any point,” he warned.
“It does not depend on me (…) There is a new generation of young people (Serbs) in Kosovo who will not tolerate this situation, who will not want to endure terror, who do not see Kosovo as an independent state but as a territory of Serbia, in accordance with international law,” he argued.
Belgrade has never recognized the independence proclaimed by Kosovo in 2008, a decade after a bloody war that left 13,000 dead, mostly Albanian Kosovars. Since then, the region has been the scene of episodic frictions. The approximately 120,000 Kosovo Serbs, a third of whom live in the north of the territory, do not recognize the authority of Pristina and remain loyal to Belgrade.
“Illegal Serbian structures turned into criminal gangs”
Pristina said he was convinced that Serbia would take advantage of the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to launch an offensive against Kosovo. “The Kosovars have every reason to be vigilant against the destructive attitude of our neighbour,” Albin Kurti replied at a separate press conference.
“On the one hand, you have the democratic state of Kosovo, with its professional police. On the other, illegal Serbian structures transformed into criminal gangs, which erect barricades” in the north of the country, launched the Prime Minister kosovar.
Invoking a principle of “reciprocity”, Pristina plans to impose temporary residence permits on people entering Kosovo with a Serbian identity card, and to require Serbs present in the country to replace Serbian license plates from their vehicles with Republic of Kosovo plates. Under American pressure, Kosovo had agreed to postpone the implementation of these measures until September 1.
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