Slobodan Samardzic: In Washington, Pristina achieved almost everything – Politics

“Washington and Brussels have approached Serbia with the last step, and that is the acceptance of a binding agreement on the recognition of ‘Kosovo’.” Therefore, it did not have to be that Vučić did not undertake to recognize the independence of ‘Kosovo’ in the interest of the alleged continuation of the path towards the EU through a conclusion of the Government of Serbia (January 2014). The West was silent on Serbia’s return to the 1990s because of this promise of recognition, so now is the time for Vučić to pay off his debt. “

This is how Slobodan Samardzic, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences and former minister of Kosovo and Metohija in the second government of Vojislav Kostunica, sees the consequences of the Belgrade-Pristina agreement recently signed at the White House, in a conversation with Danas by email.

The Washington documents, as well as the meeting that followed their signing in Brussels on the occasion of the continuation of the dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, changed the relationship between Serbia and Kosovo and Metohija, he believes.

When asked whether Serbia gained or lost more in relation to Kosovo during the latest negotiations, Samardzic replied: “With every such meeting, Serbia loses and ‘Kosovo’ wins.”

* Before the departure of the President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić, for the earlier talks in Brussels (in July this year), he wrote that “Vučić is going to Brussels like a strawberry”, and that he has no strategy and made a request for continue the dialogue with Kosovo. How do you evaluate the results of these subsequent talks in Washington and then in Brussels? Did Vučić go through a “strawberry throat”?

– He himself said that he was going to Washington without knowing what awaited him there. It’s even worse than “strawberry throat”. This time, I didn’t know if there were strawberries in the strawberry. There, a confusing document awaited him, so that after all, it looked as if he had eaten a beetle and not a strawberry. Truth be told, an article on the so-called Economic Normalization really seems exotic. And when the American pomp and Vučić’s episodic role in it unfolds, you can see that Serbia hardly benefits from it, and there is a lot of harm from that. The normal question is, why did Vučić go there unseen, and when he arrived, why did he sign a legally unidentified and politically dangerous document? But, as before, he did not play on his own account, but at the expense of Serbia.

* What do you think of Professor Ognjen Radonjic’s assessment that, under the Washington Accord, Kosovo will be independent in one year? Based on similar arguments, Professor Vladeta Janković predicted that Kosovo could join the United Nations once the moratorium expires. Is a comma so important in the text of the agreement?

– That penultimate point of the document is one of Vučić’s phase capitulations. Serbia must renounce its only effective policy regarding Kosovo and Metohija: the campaign for the abolition of recognition, but the restriction for “Kosovo” only refers to the admission requirements in international organizations. And for a year. It is assumed that within a year at most all the conditions for the recognition of “Kosovo” by Serbia and, therefore, for the entry of this Western creation into the UN will be fulfilled. It is enough time for the United States and Russia to agree on some important issues (for example, on Crimea) so that Russia, under the understandable pretext that they cannot be Serbs greater than Serbs, is silent on the entry of Kosovo at the UN. Turns out it will really be a historical comma.

* What do you think of the confusion that has arisen in the Serbian public, but also in the world, regarding the announcement of the relocation of the Serbian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and the confusing messages from the authorities in this regard?

– It is only an indicator of the depth of the decline of Serbia in the international environment. Such an offer from Trump was truly indecent. But, he didn’t risk having Vučić at all, and he still turns out to be a victim of Serbia. Our country has become an eternal bet on Vučić’s insatiable need for omnipotence.

* How much has Serbia’s foreign policy position changed in recent weeks, taking into account the provisions of the Washington agreement, pressure from the EU to postpone military exercises and even current events in the region? What are the possible consequences of this?

– This question is logically based on the previous one. Serbia has become an unimportant country in the western strategy of the so-called Western Balkans, still serving only as a buffer zone in the emerging international order of large areas. From this point of view, the role of Serbia is neither greater nor more important than the role of “Kosovo”, a construction that fulfills all the conditions of the concept of a “failed state”. Washington vaudeville showed better that Serbia and “Kosovo” are now on an equal footing. And that was best confirmed by President Vučić with his exalted enthusiasm for the role of extra. Going to Brussels, on stage for the second act, only confirmed that the man is still playing cheap notes.

* Negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina before the EU on the formation of the Union of Serbian Municipalities in Kosovo and Metohija continue these days, and different conditions have already been heard from the two parties in this regard. Is the CCM really the most important and the best thing that Serbia can negotiate for its citizens in Kosovo and Metohija at the moment?

– First of all, what is ZSO. Our public is convinced that this is the result of Vučić’s fight for the interests of the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. On the contrary, the community of municipalities, including the Serbs, is a concept in Martti Ahtisaari’s plan (Annex IV) that was translated into the Constitution of “Kosovo” and from there into the local law on local self-government. It is known that this original document was rejected by Serbia in due course. There is nothing new in the provisions of the First Brussels Agreement (2013) on the JCC in relation to this source and its derivatives mentioned. So, Vučić did not get anything for the Kosovo Serbs, which is no longer a constitutional and legal obligation of “Kosovo”, and gave everything that Serbia had legally and factually at its disposal in the province. He was such a skilled negotiator that in the end he didn’t even win the JCC. The EU, as mediator, did not want to convince the Albanian representatives to fulfill their contractual obligation to the rest of Serbia. Rather than nullify the Brussels Agreement for all that, Vučić stayed in the EU waiting room for seven and a half years, and is now scoring points with ZSO as a “win” for the recognition of “Kosovo’s” independence. .

* Do you get the impression that the European Union is determined to solve the Kosovo problem in the near future? How much is the EU competing with the US on this?

– I’m afraid that this work will end with ZSO as a difficult Albanian concession awarded to Vučić. We must not forget that the Brussels Agreement as the beginning of the de jure recognition of “Kosovo” and the legally binding agreement as the end are ideas of the European Union. The Washington document is only a brake on the softest possible fall of Serbia into the abyss of self-humiliation and self-denial of the state. There is mainly cooperation between the EU and the US in joint work, and only occasional secondary competition regarding specific special interests.

Implementation of equalization in the Balkans

* He also wrote somewhere that the West’s support for Vučić shows that the “Đukanović model” is working here. And these days, we are seeing how, it seems, Milo Đukanović is losing that support. The EU is also rising up against Lukashenko in Belarus. Can it be said that the West withdraws support for dictators and how could that affect Vučić?

– In these matters, the West is following a very pragmatic policy. There are no problems with the nature of government in countries that Western politicians see as their periphery, a buffer zone, or simply a sphere of influence. In such situations, there is little room for maneuver for the democratic opposition, which at the same time does not want to be a mere instrument of anyone’s foreign policy or strategy. I believe that Serbia is in a worse situation compared to Montenegro before the elections and Belarus today, although the model of government is almost the same. Serbia must cross the strait to which one side is the existing dictatorship and the other the effort of the West in the region of the so-called Western Balkans to implement political equalization. Only such a strategy of the opposition will be able to elicit the support of the masses that the Montenegrin opposition recently won, albeit under quite different conditions.

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