Belgrade’s policy has been on the wrong track on the southern province for 12 years and this can be seen from the results, says retired FPN professor Slobodan Samardzic. He adds that the president, having strong Western protection, simply let Kosovo Serbs down the water and renounced practically Kosovo and Metohija.
Commenting on the recent statements of the president and the announcements of important statements, Samardzic points out that Vucic “gives important statements that Vucic gives more or less every day.”
“However, since there is a difficult wrong behind him – because he has handed over part of the state to others – he can hardly turn over the new leaf. This policy has led to this situation in Kosovo and Metohija, it cannot do anything, we should not expect that at 72 we will hear some thing. The problem with the president is that he talks, and he doesn’t work. He is pursuing a very reactive, passive policy of Kosovo and Metohija,” says Slobodan Samardzic.
Aleksandar Vucic, he assesses, follows what is being said to him from Brussels and Washington.
“These negotiations have moved the position of the Kosovo Albanians every time, so there has always been some kind of problem that Albin Kurti has made, spreading his influence towards the north of Kosovo, and then it is talked about,” he said.
When, at the objection of Belgrade, the police officers left the institutions, Kurti brought some kind of quasi administration and sealed what Vucic started, reminds.
When asked why the Serbian ambassador to Podgorica went to the president of the Montenegrin Parliament with six requests (elections, return of police officers, prosecutors and judges to the service of the provisional institutions, the formation of the ZSO, the release of all Serbs who were arrested for political reasons, the issue of blocking imports of goods from central Serbia), Samardzic says that these demands – with this policy are a dead letter on paper.
“And the international presence in Kosovo and the Albanian government have a good interlocutor in Vucic. He has a dramatic story here, but he does not resist. This is not about the demands, but how Serbia will now be placed on certain problems. No one will accept these demands, the ambassadors will talk about how this will be resolved through dialogue. This dialogue not only has no benefit for the Serbs and Serbia, but also which round of negotiations – that to the Serbs in Kosovo above,” he added.
Negotiations, he advises, should not flow, but should be stopped until the situation is restored from, for example, a year ago that Kurti changed with his aggressive actions.
“The second possible move is that Serbia does not allow Albanian trucks to go from Kosovo through Serbia with reciprocal measures. The next step may be a unilateral exit from the first Brisev agreement. The Vienna Convention on the Protremizing Law says if decisions, norms and provisions are not implemented from international treaties, there is no situation like when it was contracted and each side can be withdrawn. You see, the Community of Serb Municipalities has not been achieved for 11 years. There is no country in the world that would not have broken such a contract unilaterally,” he points out.
Serbia must actively play in order for the other parties to start to respect it, he said.
Asked if this would jeopardize Kosovo Serbs, he said that Kosovo Serbs are in the hands of Kosovo Albanians and international sides.
“If international forces do not protect them, there is another way that the Serbian side should react. She would have to propose to them help, assistance in the work they do not do, in protecting the Serbs. That’s what Serbian police officers could do… It’s something to move the matter from a dead spot. We are moving towards total defeat. There are still a few things needed to be done under the Franco-German agreement and bring things to an end. To sign the so-called binding document on the normalization of relations. It’s de jure recognition. If this is done, Kosovo is de jure independent, Serbs are completely in the hands of Albanians, the international community or Western actors will withdraw from there,” Samardzic predicts.
The goal of the Albanians, especially Kurti, is to expel Serbs from that area, according to Samardzic.
“When you have a scenario like that, you don’t have to be afraid. It doesn’t matter if the Albanians would take it as a threat, because you’re the state. Vucic played for his side. He gave everything, he didn’t get anything. That hazard he would not do according to his private property and his family, but he did it according to the state. But nevertheless, it stands on paper that the community of Serb municipalities should be organized. If it’s not done, you know you’re totally going to the ambis. In five, 10 years, Serbs will all come out of Kosovo,” says Professor FPN in retirement.
The question is whether Kurti is enough, he points out.
“Kurti has some other idea in his head. He is a great Albanian, a hogiist by his ideological profile and sees himself as the future leader of the Albanian nation as a whole, regardless of the borders. So it is not impossible that even after that de jure recognition, the matter would be quite problematic, primarily bearing in mind that he re-submits Albanians in two municipalities in South Serbia, that they constantly demand something that they otherwise have or something they cannot have because they are a minority,” he says.
While Kurti has a maneuvering space, the Serbian maneuvering space narrows and the days may be counted when the matter will end.
“What I am saying is something that would prevent it, regardless of the fact that they would grumble in Brussels and in Washington, but you are rightly doing it, without violating the agreements that have been signed, and especially not Resolution 1244 and many international acts that give guarantees for a lot when it comes to the protection of minorities, and human rights. We are used to this passivity here and no one is thinking that one has to be a very active policy in this case now towards Brussels and Washington,” he said.
Samardzic adds that Vucic excluded Russia even before the war in Ukraine from this story.
“He never asked that there be a Russian side in these negotiations, because of some global balance of that issue that is not local. I think that Vucic does not have the capacity, but there is no room for him to do so, because he has destroyed all the bridges behind him and he has entered deep into promises and obligations to the West, and they do not forgive that,” Samardzic concluded.
