Besic: The Resolution on Jasenovac will not contribute to regional stability

Professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade, Milos Besic, assesses that the Resolution on Jasenovac will not contribute to regional stability and that the consequences for Montenegro due to its adoption will mostly depend on the assessment of the leading EU countries.

"The resolution will certainly damage relations between Croatia and Montenegro. We will see to what extent, depending also on other factors, primarily other European countries," Besic told Kosovo Online.

He emphasizes that the motive for adopting the resolution was to mitigate the effect of adopting the Resolution on Srebrenica before the UN Security Council, and that Montenegro, with the consent of Austria and Germany, mitigated the effects of its resolution by adding the Mauthausen and Dachau camps.

"The actual motive of the resolution was to mitigate the effects of adopting the Resolution on Srebrenica, which happened against the will and desire of Montenegro. There was pressure from the Serbian factor and Serbian actors within the party framework in Montenegro, namely parties that support the ruling party, to adopt such a resolution. The ruling party, the Europe Now Movement, responded in a way that accommodated this," Besic says.

He adds that the effects of adopting the resolution are already visible through Croatia's protest note and the cancellation of the visit of the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, to Podgorica.

"The resolution is already causing problems, and we will see what the final consequences are. It will depend mostly on the key EU countries, which will or will not mitigate the negative effects of this resolution," the professor of the Faculty of Political Sciences believes.

Asked whether the resolution will open another topic in the region, Besic says that this is just part of "all the topics" in the Western Balkans.

"This topic is an integral part of all the topics, or the topic of all topics that we have here in various forms, and it is simply called nationalism in the Balkans. All the states of the former Yugoslavia are markedly nationalistic. Montenegro was partially an exception to this, considering the many years of DPS rule that tried to distance itself from the Serbian national factor. Of course, this was neither possible nor successful because the Serbian factor is very strong in Montenegro," Besic concludes.