Mitic: Escobar is aware that Kurti will not change his position; it will be difficult to make progress at the meeting in Brussels

Aleksandar Mitic, a research associate at the Institute for International Politics and Economy, assessed for Kosovo Online that it was clear that the US Special Envoy Gabriel Escobar when he said that he had not received assurances from Albin Kurti that he was committed to normalization, was aware that the Kosovo Prime Minister would not change his position that had the support of a part of the Quint.

"Kurti wants him to be the one who fully controls the situation in Kosovo, including the north. The fact is that the USA does not fully agree with such a performance, they consider it aggressive, and counterproductive, but on the other hand, they do not mind Pristina controlling the situation in the north, to know, as they say, what Kosovo's sovereignty is. The difference is more in the tactical approach between the Americans on the one hand and the others who support Kosovo's independence, primarily Germany, but also Great Britain to a certain extent," Mitic said.

He adds that no harsh measures against Kurti can be expected because until now the West has applied the "good cop and bad cop" tactic towards Pristina.

"There were contradictory messages sent by the Americans; on the one hand, the Kosovo Security Forces were allegedly sanctioned by not participating in the second and third day of the military exercise 'Defender 2023', and then they went over the fact that the KSF should not have been trained for such actions, given that there is no agreement within NATO, but that the US itself is bilaterally training something that is the nucleus of a future Kosovo army," Mitic points out.

He points out that so far it has been seen that the pressures exerted on Kosovo are "very limited and do not fundamentally affect Kurti in any way".

"If you get a small slap on the wrist on the one hand, and on the other hand EU visa liberalization and you get support for membership in the Council of Europe, you simply understand that they don't want to pressure you so much that you have to give up your policy. Of course, Kurti is not comfortable because certain measures have been introduced, because there is internal pressure on the Albanian political scene from those who are in favor of greater agreement with the US policy, for complete harmonization with the position of Washington. The fact is that Kurti does not see this as enough pressure and I do not expect that at this moment he can change something in his behavior," Mitic believes.

He reminds us of the causes of the crisis in the north and that the escalation of the situation is a consequence of the support of the Quint countries to Kurti to implement a policy that pushes Belgrade and the Kosovo Serbs to accept "a Franco-German proposal that is unfavorable for them, and on the other hand, that Pristina does not fulfill any of what was agreed by the Brussels Agreement, as it was defined in 2013, that is, in 2015".

"We know why the Serbs left the institutions last year, they left not only because of the violence that threatened them but also because there was no implementation and enforcement of the Community of Serb-majority Municipalities in the way it should have been done," Mitic says.

He points out that the CSM is not a non-governmental organization as imagined by some German non-governmental organizations and Americans.

"The CSM is defined by the Brussels Agreement, which, no matter how bad it was for Serbian interests, was signed and there are certain guarantees that it must be fulfilled. If the Serbs left the institutions in protest, now any return to the institutions, elections, or whatever is unacceptable. What we see as Escobar's tactics is that he wants to say that now the most important thing is for the Serbs to return to the institutions, no matter what. This is also what the EU Special Envoy for Dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, says," Mitic emphasizes.

He believes that we should not expect any significant results from Brussels, where a new round of high-level dialogue is scheduled for tomorrow.

"This meeting is a kind of continuation of what we had in the past weeks at various forums, the last one was Brdo-Brijuni in Skopje. In the coming weeks, the meeting of the Berlin Process, and meetings at the EU summit should be held and they will all try to discuss this topic and exert additional pressure, but I don't see that they can move things in any way with such mild pressure on Kurti," Mitic says.

According to him, not even Escobar's statements, in which he announced the possibility of new sanctions against Kosovo, will have much effect on Kurti.

"As long as he has the support of certain countries and his position does not deviate from their goal, which is to legitimize and legalize an independent Kosovo, Kurti has no reason to withdraw," Mitic concludes.