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After the September 24 clashes led by Kosovo Serb politician Milan Radojic in the northern Kosovo town of Baniska on October 3, 2023, Kosovo police continued search, patrol and enforcement operations in the area to maintain security. is maintained. A group of armed Serbs blocked the bridge with two trucks and clashes broke out in the village. A gunfight broke out after the group opened fire on police, leaving one police officer dead and another injured. (Photo by Vudi Xhymshiti/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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DAVOS, SWITZERLAND – While Europe’s attention is focused on the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, another part of the region’s most volatile conflict zone is peaceful, according to the EU’s top diplomat. It is said that stability is far from guaranteed.
Relations between Serbia and Kosovo have been troubled since a brutal conflict in the 1990s and remain delicate a year after an interim agreement on a new path to normalization was reached.
“Stability is fragile. We cannot take peace and stability for granted,” Miroslav Lajcak, the EU’s special representative for the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue and the Western Balkans, told CNBC in Davos, Switzerland, last month. .
The Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue is a series of talks organized by the European Union with the aim of de-escalating hostilities between neighboring south-eastern European countries.
In February 2023, Serbia and Kosovo agreed on a path to normalization, a major step forward in a long-standing rivalry that has seen decades of friction centered on territorial disputes and ethnic divisions.
However, that progress was later undermined by a resurgence of violence in northern Kosovo, including a deadly shootout between a group of heavily armed Serbs and the Kosovo Special Police in the village of Baniska.
Northern Kosovo is Serb-majority, and Belgrade claims Kosovo as a southern province. Meanwhile, Kosovo as a whole is about 93% Albanian, and Pristina declared independence in 2008.
Years of conflict between the two sides have left Europe deeply divided over its future path, with EU member states such as Spain, Slovakia, Cyprus, Romania and Greece, as well as other non-EU neighbors contesting Kosovo’s claim to independence. There is.
But Lajcak said the normalization deal had brought the situation to an “unprecedented level” and the focus was now on its implementation. Normalization measures include the development of “normal good-neighborly relations” and the restraint of “the threat or use of force” in future conflicts.
“There’s no going back now,” he said. “There is no way forward to this agreement as these agreements have been accepted by both parties.”
Normalization will also depend on how directly and closely linked Kosovo and Serbia are to the EU path.
Miroslav Lajčak
Special Representative of the EU on the Belgrade-Pristina Dialogue and the Western Balkans
The EU and the US are investing heavily in normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo, even as they battle other rapidly evolving international conflicts between Israel and Hamas, Russia and Ukraine.
But the clock is ticking. With European Parliament elections scheduled for this summer and elections in the United States later this year, it will be vitally important that negotiations to normalize diplomatic relations make progress before this issue becomes a lower priority.
“What starts before the EU and the US enter the elections will continue throughout the electoral process,” Lajcak said. “But I doubt whether something that does not begin before will begin after.”
Kosovo police and NATO’s Kosovo Peacekeeping Force (KFOR) continued to carry out search, patrol and enforcement operations in Baniska, northern Kosovo, on September 30, 2023, following the September 24 incident in Baniska, northern Kosovo. We continue to ensure that.
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Resistance is likely to come from the respective leaders of Serbia and Kosovo, President Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister Albin Kurti, who have strongholds of nationalist appeasement within their countries.
The stakes are high for both sides. Lajčak said that, bearing in mind that Serbia and Kosovo are about to join the EU, this could be a carrot to encourage the EU to make peace between the two countries.
Serbia is currently in the midst of EU accession negotiations, having been granted candidate status in 2012, and Kosovo is also a possible candidate, although both require major reforms to be admitted to the EU. Become.
“The success of the normalization process will also depend on how directly and closely linked Kosovo and Serbia are to the EU path,” Lajčák said. “This is the most powerful influence we have.”
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