Klacar: It is certain that the dynamics of negotiations regarding Kosovo will accelerate this year

CeSID Executive Director Bojan Klacar believes that it is certain that in 2023 the dynamics of resolving the Kosovo issue will accelerate, RTV reports.

"It is certain that this year the dynamics of the negotiations regarding Kosovo and Metohija will accelerate, it seems that the focus is no longer so much on Serbia imposing sanctions on Russia, but that the focus of the international community has gone to Kosovo and reaching some kind of agreement that would be, if not final, then close to the final solution," said Klacar for Tanjug, commenting on the messages of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic last night.

Klacar adds that the international community estimated that this would be a more effective way than imposing sanctions on Russia, because by reaching an agreement between Belgrade and Pristina, actually imposing sanctions on Russia would become less important, while on another level it would exclude Moscow's key influence in the Balkans and in Serbia.

"And that has always been Kosovo more than energy, so we will probably witness the accelerated dynamics of Kosovo, that Serbia will have to express itself relatively quickly about the offered solutions and that Serbian society will have to debate that solution in a serious way because both accepting and rejecting the solution entail different good and bad consequences," he states.

Klacar believes that the proposed Franco-German agreement will continue to be discussed and that the revised document is not final, that it is not a take-it-or-leave-it document.

According to him, it can be expected that the international community will put Serbia in a situation where it will present the possible consequences of not signing or not reaching an agreement with Pristina.

"It will not be the introduction of sanctions against Serbia, the withdrawal of investments, but there will be negative consequences that would probably be a kind of isolation of Serbia, a partial or complete stoppage of the process of European integration," Klacar says.

As he states, it seems that European countries at this moment want clearer and more precise positions from Serbia, and that the policy of the USA is somewhat more balanced, that they do not insist on some solutions that go to the detriment of Serbia.

"Nevertheless, it is certainly to be expected that Serbia will not have an easy position in those talks because, as he says, the parts of the agreement proposals that have been put forward in the public are still more in favor of Pristina than Belgrade and it seems that there are few elements of compromise in them ", he added.

Klacar believes that Pristina would get more primarily due to getting a seat in the UN and states that, if that happens, it is completely irrelevant whether Serbia will recognize Kosovo or not and whether it will send its ambassador to Pristina.

Commenting on the writing of the German "Zeit" that the president of Serbia should be "tamed", Klacar says that in a part of the European media, tones that were not characteristic until now are slowly breaking through, and which speak more explicitly about the fact that Serbia should be exposed to much greater pressures and greater sanctions than it is.

"I believe that such an approach is wrong, that exposing Serbia to threats of sanctions was counterproductive, that the much better approach of all Western partners is to place the negotiations over Kosovo within the framework of building a partnership with Serbia, but Serbia should be aware that the war in Ukraine changed the atmosphere and that Serbia's position due to its closeness to Russia is different today than a year ago, and it would be good to be careful not to cross some borders after which it would not be possible to return to the way things were," Klacar said.