Malcolm: The West is to blame for the situation in Kosovo

Noel Malcolm, an English political journalist, historian and academic said that the West was to blame for the situation in which Kosovo was nowadays, Gazeta Blic reports.

"What I would like to say is that since 1998, the relationship of external factors towards Kosovo has been mostly disappointing. Of course, there were clearly good moments: the liberation of Kosovo with the help of NATO forces, the final support for the declaration of independence in 2008, something extremely important at that time. But in other aspects it is disappointing that the West has never been coordinated in the strategy for Kosovo," says Malcolm, who is also the author of the book "A Brief History of Kosovo".

Malcolm believes that the countries of the region should have issued a joint statement in which they would support the independence of Kosovo.

"A small example, but not so small. It was necessary for all the countries of the region to come out with a joint statement, where they say: we welcome this development of events and this is the right step, not a threat to stability in the region, on the contrary. This joint declaration of the countries of the region would have had a great influence on world opinion. They did not do that and left countries like Russia to manipulate the Kosovo issue for their own interests," he said.

According to Malcolm, the history from the adoption of Ahtisaari's plan until today shows that Serbia has never been under the same pressure as Kosovo when it comes to reaching and implementing an agreement.

"They decided to implement Ahtisaari's plan selectively. That plan had an annex in which it was written that the files on cultural heritage issues in the Belgrade archive would have to be returned to Pristina. Have they ever tried to make this happen? Not at all. But when they say that the two sides must reach a compromise, my impression is that they are putting double pressure on Kosovo than on Serbia. Under Ahtisaari's plan, Kosovo has made many concessions regarding the rights of the Serbs living in its territory, and they are still demanding concessions from Pristina, allowing Belgrade to make more demands," Malcolm said.

Malcolm believes that the war in Ukraine will wake up the West and that America will pay more attention to Kosovo.

"If there is one consolation... one small consolation from the terrible war in Ukraine, it is that the West has woken up, that it will now be on the lookout for the Russian strategy in the Balkans. I hope for the return of the Americans' attention to Kosovo, the attention that was lost after 2008. I hope that Western countries will be more concentrated in the region," he concluded.