DOES AMERICA INTRODUCE RECOGNITION INTO DIALOGUE? The US representative in Pristina, Filip Kosnet, hinted at the transition to political issues

Summing up the talks with Albanian politicians, Lajcak said that he had sent them a clear request to form the Union of Serbian Municipalities.

– The 2013 and 2015 Brussels agreement provides for the formation of the JCC, but that has not been done until today. This must be established in agreement with the constitutional court. Talking about the Statute should be the next step. Part of a comprehensive agreement is that the agreement begins to apply after signing. Details about ZSO must be agreed – said Lajcak.

He stated that he had received confirmation in Pristina that all obligations, including the JCC, would be fulfilled, noting that the topic of conversation was the normalization of relations between Belgrade and Pristina:

– I am not in a position to want an agreement more than Kosovo and Serbia. If there is no will for an agreement, there will be none. There is no normalization without ZSO.

At the White House on September 4, when the President of Serbia and the Prime Minister of the Provisional Institutions, Avdullah Hoti, signed the agreements in the presence of President Donald Trump, US envoy Richard Grenel said the emphasis was on the economy. The question is whether Kosnet did a “solo” with the last statement or, after all, did he go up a notch.

According to the assessment of the president of the Center for Foreign Policy, Dragan Đukanović, Kosnet did not deviate from the path that Grenel traced, which means that economic issues are discussed first and politics is left for later.

– The United States is not against entering the phase of political talks, because it is interested in reaching a global agreement between Belgrade and Pristina and is looking for a formula to achieve it and adapt it to its position. And, as we know, the United States recognized Kosovo in 2008. Furthermore, the economy is considered, in principle, a finished story, and the entry into the political stage of the talks was announced by the signing of an agreement in Washington by which Belgrade promised to suspend the campaign for the recognition of Kosovo, and Pristina not to seek admission to international organizations, Djukanovic said. News”.

He also claims that Kosnet didn’t say anything new, because the US Special Representative for the Western Balkans, Matthew Palmer, repeatedly said that mutual recognition would be the ideal outcome of the negotiation process.

– Although Kosnet is not with his statement on the so-called Mutual Recognition came out of the broader framework of US foreign policy, it is a somewhat unusual occasion in which he emphasized this goal. That is, by talking about it after the meeting with Lajcak, emphasizing the complementarity of the Washington agreement with the Brussels dialogue, Kosnet contributed to creating the impression that some kind of recognition to the so-called Belgrade official is considering Kosovo as part of the negotiation process, which was by no means the case in the capital of the United States, and it is completely excluded that it is a subject of negotiations at the headquarters of the EU institutions, Nemanja Starovic of the Center for Social Stability told Novosti . – It would be much more useful if the US ambassador, in the spirit of the Washington Agreement, widened the space for compromise with his statements, taking into account at least a one-year period in which the status issue was set aside kosmet, instead of contributing to the maximalist ambitions in Albania public in Kosovo and Metohija.

The Prime Minister of the Provisional Institutions of Pristina, Avdulah Hoti, said on Thursday that, when it comes to dialogue with Belgrade, he will not accept a solution that leaves open questions, that he will not trade with the territory of Kosovo, nor make concessions.