The US hopes that the Kosovo issue will be resolved under Trump
The appointment of Matthew Palmer as US special envoy for the Western Balkans marks “the final push to resolve tensions between Serbia and Kosovo.
The American magazine Foreign Policy writes about this, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“This increases the likelihood that we will find some resolution to this issue before the end of the Trump administration,” foreign policy expert Daniel Vajdic said.
Foreign Policy recalls that Palmer's appointment follows a meeting between US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic in New York earlier this month. Pompeo called on Vucic to resume negotiations with Kosovo and “engage in the spirit of compromise and flexibility necessary to secure an agreement and unlock the potential of both countries.”
“Last year, US National Security Adviser John Bolton said the United States would support a deal between Serbia and Kosovo, including a potential deal that would involve a territorial swap between the two countries. Critics argued that any land swap deals could lead to further instability,” the article said.
“Proposals for the Kosovo-Serbian “delimitation”, consisting in Belgrade returning the Serb-populated areas in the north of Kosovo to its de facto control, in exchange for handing over to Pristina two Albanian-populated areas in the south of Serbia, like any real compromise, have enough opponents both among the Serbs, and among Kosovar Albanians. But to “concrete” the “powder keg of Europe” (as Winston Churchill called the Balkans), it is necessary to achieve a long-term Serbian-Albanian, Christian-Islamic peace.
Which is possible only if the confrontation around Kosovo is resolved. This indisputable fact is equally well understood in Belgrade, European capitals and Ankara. Here are the interests of the energy and international security of Europe - the transit of Russian energy resources bypassing Ukraine through the second line of the Turkish Stream,” political scientist and Balkan expert Oleg Bondarenko wrote in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
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