|
Kosovo caretaker Prime Minister Kurti in a Zoom
press conference this morning confirmed a lot of suspicions:
The United States, in particular Special Envoy
and Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, has played an
important role in unseating Kurti, who has been defeated in a
confidence vote the US welcomed.
Grenell has opposed Kurti’s efforts to get
reciprocity for Kosovo and instead insists on unilateral and
complete abolition of the tariffs Kurti’s predecessor imposed on
Serbian goods, without any quid pro quo from Serbia.
The dialogue between Pristina and Belgrade
should be held under the auspices of both the EU and the US, not one
or the other but both acting together.
Kurti said he was not invited to such a
dialogue but only to an opportunity to sign up for the land (and
people) swap Presidents Vucic and Thaci have been discussing.
It would send three majority-Serb
municipalities (but not North Mitrovica) to Serbia and provide for
both extraterritoriality for Serbian sites south of the Ibar river
as well as a Serb Association of Municipalities, with only part of
the majority-Albanian Serbian municipality of Presevo in return.
Kosovo would not even get Serbian recognition,
but rather a kind of acceptance of the status quo, like West and
East Germany.
NATO would still protect Kosovo’s main water
supply, Gazivoda.
Kurti believes Thaci is doing this to protect
himself from indictment by the Special Tribunal in The Hague but
does not see how such a deal could be approved in Kosovo’s
parliament, much less by the electorate.
Albin is proving strikingly popular in recent
polling, not least due to his insistence on reciprocity with Serbia
and his opposition to his President’s land/people swap plans. He
made it clear in his remarks that he anticipates instability if he
is removed from office (and implied he wouldn’t do anything to
discourage it). What he wants is early elections, which he
anticipates winning, perhaps even with an absolute majority in
parliament.
This is all happening in the midst of the corona
virus epidemic, which remains a big challenge for a poor country
that has a weak health care system and has lost many medical
personnel to emigration. For now, a new election is out of the
question. More likely is that President Thaci will find an
alternative majority in parliament that will name a new prime
minister and grant him the emergency powers he has sought. They will
be used not only to fight Covid-19 but also to try to proceed with
the land swap deal, under pressure from the Americans to give
President Trump something he can boast about during the US election
campaign.
This is an ugly situation, with much wider
implications in the Balkans and beyond. The land swap would validate
an ethno-territorial concept Moscow has pursued not only in the
Balkans, in particular Bosnia and Herzegovina, but also in Georgia,
Moldova, and Ukraine. Russian President Putin would enjoy the
consequences no end, a result the ethno-nationalist Trump
Administration would welcome.
Ironically, President Vucic may right now be the
biggest obstacle to a quick deal. He has made it clear he will not
proceed until after the Serbian elections, which have been postponed
from April due to Covid-19. That said, the kind of deal Kurti
outlined today should be more than satisfactory to Belgrade, which
is required to do little but give up part of a municipality whose
population it finds troublesome. By the same token, it is hard to
fathom how anyone in Pristina would even consider it.
|
