Tensions in northern Kosovo, home to the Serb minority, have risen again since December. Shots fired at police officers at night, numerous road blockades and an attack on emergency services from the EU mission Eulex had increased international concern. Measures should be taken immediately to de-escalate the situation, provocations, threats or intimidation should be avoided, according to a joint statement by the US and the EU.
Serbia and Kosovo have been making threats to each other for weeks, while at the same time blaming the other for the current situation. Serbia’s Prime Minister Ana Brnabic even warned of an “armed conflict” in early December. According to ex-diplomat Petritsch, however, neither the government in Prishtina nor in Belgrade would risk the situation escalating militarily. Nevertheless, you have to “observe current developments very closely,” he adds.
Petritsch knows both sides of the conflict very well. In the 1990s, the native of Carinthia was ambassador in Belgrade and later EU chief diplomat in the negotiations between Serbs and Kosovar Albanians in Rambouillet and Paris. Because of the NATO peacekeeping mission KFOR, which has been stationed in Kosovo since 1999, he is confident, he says in an interview with ORF.at. KFOR is recognized by both sides as an “important security control” in the region.
The EU and the US want results
Today almost exclusively inhabited by Albanians, Kosovo used to belong to Serbia and declared its independence in 2008. To this day, Belgrade regards Kosovo as a breakaway territory and claims the territory for itself. However, ten years ago both countries committed themselves to a dialogue sponsored by the EU. Both Kosovo and Serbia are striving for union membership, which the EU is also linking to the talks. But the big advances are a long time coming.
The current tensions must therefore also be seen against the background that both countries are under great pressure. Both the EU and the US want to see new results in 2023. This means nothing other than that the relationship between Kosovo and Serbia must “normalize a little further”. At the beginning of December, the EU presented the Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti with a new proposal as to when which steps could be taken.
Kosovo: Merdare border crossing closed
Disputes between Serbia and Kosovo are escalating in the Balkans. After Serbia put the army on alert due to growing tensions with the government in Prishtina, Kosovo closed the largest border crossing with the neighboring country. Previously, demonstrators on the Serbian side had blocked access to the Merdare crossing.
The updated paper was prepared with the support of Germany and France. Government officials from Paris and Berlin have suggested in the past that Serbia, while not recognizing Kosovo’s independence, must accept it. In particular, Belgrade should no longer block the neighboring state’s membership in international organizations. In return, Serbia could receive financial aid from the EU.
Ambassador with Kosovo experience
Before there is a breakthrough, there will be “a lot of thunder,” says Petritsch. By this, the former foreign policy adviser to Chancellor Bruno Kreisky (SPÖ) means that parties under pressure before a solution are very loud and openly air provocations. This is particularly tricky when, as in the case of the Kosovo issue, compromise is a foreign concept for both parties. But this compromise is demanded by the EU and the USA.
For this reason, the USA has been relying on a diplomat with excellent contacts in Kosovo since last year: Christopher Hill. He has been the US Ambassador in Belgrade since 2021. Like Petritsch, Hill was also a member of the contact group at the Kosovo negotiations in 1999. Efforts to find a peaceful solution ultimately failed – NATO flew airstrikes on what was then Yugoslavia – but Hill left its mark, as the Balkan Insight portal recently reported. His work was praised by both parties to the conflict in 1999.
As “shuttle” diplomats, as Petritsch called the work, Hill rushed back and forth between the conflicting parties with his US colleague. He himself said in 2019, even before his engagement as ambassador in Serbia and the Russian attack on Ukraine, that the issue of Kosovo was still the one that would separate Europe from its goal of peaceful coexistence. He criticized the foreign policy of ex-President Donald Trump, who had made the United States “irrelevant” through unilateralism on important issues.
East and West influence
With the Biden administration, the US put its focus more on the Balkans, as several experts have outlined, particularly on Kosovo. In return, Russia recently backed Serbia. “We have very close ties as allies with Serbia,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. One closely follows what is happening in Kosovo “and how the rights of the Serbs (there, note) are protected”. Peskov rejected Prishtina’s accusation that Serbia was influencing Serbia in order to destabilize Kosovo. It was “wrong to look for any destructive influence of Russia here”.
Serbia traditionally maintains close ties with Moscow. However, at the Western Balkans summit in early December, Vucic sharply rejected the fact that Russia was on the side of Russia in the Ukraine war. “We know our obligations to the EU, but we are an independent country and we protect our national interests,” he said. In the Kosovo issue, however, Russia is particularly important for Serbia: As a veto power, Moscow can block Kosovo’s admission to the UN.
According to Petritsch, in addition to the east-west tangent, another factor is crucial for understanding the current tensions as a whole: Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Kurti share a mutual dislike. The two politicians who should lead the talks are personalities who “cannot meet in the middle,” according to the former diplomat. It was not uncommon for verbal battles to overshadow actual attempts at negotiation.
