What are the chances that Pristina will now accept the request of the Serbs for the withdrawal of special units from the north?

The Serbs from the north of Kosovo are asking Pristina to withdraw the heavily armed Special Police Forces, which in the previous period, with numerous incidents and armed attacks on citizens, became a tool in the hands of the Kosovo authorities in imposing political solutions, but Pristina apparently has no intention of changing anything in its approach, which was demonstrated by holding extraordinary local elections without the participation of the majority Serbian community, according to the interlocutors of Kosovo Online.

For now, the countries of the Quint do not understand the demands of the Serbs to withdraw Special Police units from the streets of North Mitrovica, Zvecan, Zubin Potok, and Leposavic, and they supported the holding of the elections and the results with less than three and a half percent of voters, of whom only 13 were the Serbs.

The Albanian parties took advantage of this and candidates from PDK and Self-Determination "ran" for power in four municipalities with a dominant Serbian majority.

According to the interlocutors of Kosovo Online, due to all of the above, there is a threat of an additional rise in tensions, and now only Washington and Brussels can force Pristina to withdraw Special Forces from the north.

Miroslav Bjegovic, a security expert and special adviser to the Minister of Defense of Serbia, told Kosovo Online that only the relevant European institutions and KFOR could force Pristina to withdraw Special Police Forces with rifles, which was exactly what the Government of Serbia had requested by sending an urgent request, at the suggestion of the president Vucic as one of the conclusions with the Serbs from Kosovo.

"If Brussels, as the guarantor of the 2013 agreement, and KFOR, as the guarantor of the implementation of resolution 1244 of the Security Council, decided to respect what was signed, they would order Pristina to withdraw illegal formations from the North, which would show that they care about peace and normalization in this area, so I hope that this request will be fulfilled. Otherwise, we can consider it a breakdown of European diplomacy and democracy, international public law, as well as the role of the UN in the matter of implementation, actually a violation of Security Council resolutions," Bjegovic says.

Veroljub Petronic, a security expert from the Mitrovica Human Center, points out for Kosovo Online that most likely Pristina will not accept the request of the Serbs.

"Perhaps he will only carry out the order if the Western partners order it. The power of the petition is not always great, regardless of the signatures, because everything the Kosovo institutions did, they did based on some of their laws and powers, which was expropriation carried out in the alleged public interest. that is, land grabbing and so on. The petition has not been submitted yet, the exact number is not known. The question is what the effects of the petition will be because in the past there were other petitions that did not have a great legal effect on the cancellation of some decisions," Petronic says.

Our interlocutor says that he does not see any progress in the future because they have firmly decided to set up those bases.

"Now if Pristina were to withdraw those bases, it would experience it as a defeat both in front of its voting people and in front of the opposition, and it would be their target. I think that the opportunities to remove the bases were missed. It was not reacted when it should have been, now maybe it's too late, and it's getting harder for them to do it. They can do it only under pressure from America. Those sleeping policemen were totally unnecessarily there, in Bistrica, but it's a showing of "force", or in terms of security, institutions terror," Petronic says.