Montgomery: Kurti is the main threat to peace in the Balkans

Former US Ambassador to Serbia William Montgomery said today that the main threat to peace in the Balkans was Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti. In the author's text for Tanjug, he also said that the writings of CNN and the New York Times, which expressed a mostly negative opinion about Serbia, were encouraged by all those who advocated for Kosovo because it shifted the problem from Kurti's behavior and directed it to Serbia.
"It is now 28 years after the Dayton Peace Accords and 24 years since the end of NATO bombing in the then former Yugoslavia. The basic outcome of the fighting, the agreements that ended the fighting, and the resulting Western policy was the creation of two completely failed states: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Basically in both cases is the unwavering determination of Western countries to establish functional multi-ethnic societies in each. This is in fact the main policy objective of the EU and the US in the region. The problem is that the violence perpetrated in both cases was so horrific and traumatizing that insistence on this approach did not work," Montgomery said.
In fact, as he assesses, ethnic relations in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina are essentially as bad now as they were 30 years ago.
"There is an old Bulgarian saying, 'We have reached the very bottom, but we are still digging'! Unfortunately, this precisely illustrates the approach of the West and its various envoys and ambassadors. The EU adheres to its "soft power" approach, apparently still believing that potential membership in the EU, sometime in the next century, will lead to the fulfillment of its demands now," he said.
According to him, the main threat to peace in the Balkans is now Kurti.
According to Montgomery, Kurti's greatest wish is for Serbia to be provoked enough to send a military force to Kosovo.
"While the EU and the US see the provocations and recognize the danger, they seem paralyzed and unable to do anything to stop it. This is an obvious weakness of the US/EU policy. Instead of realizing that the West needs to come up with some different policy approaches, it keeps going back to versions of its basic, unworkable approach. The end result is that the Balkans remains an unstable area with a very high potential for violence," he said.
Montgomery points out that since the NATO bombing in 1998, public opinion surveys in Serbia consistently show Russia as the most popular country, and the US as one of the least popular.
"That fact did not stop the US from working very well with Serbia for two or more decades. That should not stop it now. There are those in the US, as seen in the New York Times articles and now even CNN, who take simplified, negative opinions about Serbia. This is strongly encouraged by all those who advocate for Kosovo because it shifts the problem from Kurti's behavior and directs it to Serbia," the former diplomat points out.
He considers it interesting that, as he notes, interest in the Non-Aligned Movement, which Tito helped to create, has been revived.
"There is a growing nostalgia for that in many countries, and the current Government seems to be trying to adopt a policy that favors that approach. Given the intensity of sentiment over the Ukraine-Russia war, this has angered many people in the West who have a 'You're with me or against me' approach. I understand and I also understand that Serbia is paying the price for its attitude. All I can say is that your Government is in an extremely difficult situation and I wish it the best of luck in that," the former US Ambassador concluded.
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