The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo inked a historic deal on Friday to normalize ties, a move key to the future of the Western Balkans and destined also to bring both closer to the EU.
Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic and Kosovar Prime Minister Hashim Thaci signed a 15-point agreement struck after two years of tough talks to reduce mutual tension and immediately won praise from around the world.
“What we are seeing is a step away from the past and, for both of them, a step closer to Europe,” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton said.
Fourteen years after the end of the war and five after Kosovo unilaterally declared independence from Serbia, hopes are that the deal will turn the page on Europe’s last Balkans troublespot.
“The agreement will help us heal the wounds of the past,” Thaci said. “This agreement represents the start of a new era, an era of reconciliation and inter-state cooperation.”
Dacic said: “Serbia’s proposals were accepted. I initialed a proposed text that both sides will decide upon in the following days to say whether they accept it or refuse it.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry welcomed the deal and called on both sides to “implement expeditiously and fully all dialogue agreements.”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he wanted to “congratulate and commend” both sides for their “steadfast determination” and hoped the deal would “bring about a brighter future and lasting stability to the region.”
However, in the northern Kosovar city of Kosovska Mitrovica, Kosovo Serbs called for a referendum and dubbed the deal “the worst surrender and betrayal” ever perpetrated by Belgrade.
The deal is expected to ease the path of both sides to the 27-member EU.
Belgrade hopes to be given a date to launch membership talks at a June EU summit and without a deal by tomorrow would have seen its ambitions to join the union delayed indefinitely.
Pristina still needs to win recognition by five of the 27 EU states but hopes meanwhile to be rewarded for mending fences with Belgrade by signing a pre-accession pact with the EU — also set to be announced at the June summit.
While there had been considerable progress in the two years of talks to reduce tensions, a deal got bogged down over the fate of 40,000 ethnic Serbs in north Kosovo who refuse to recognize Pristina’s authority and have set up their own “parallel” structures.
Serbia wanted Kosovo to agree to decentralized Serb “municipalities” in the northern enclave with their own police and courts to guarantee ethnic Serbs fair representation in Kosovo.
However, Pristina was wary of Belgrade meddling in Kosovar affairs through the Serb community and refused to agree to “a state within a state” in its north.
An unofficial version published by local Kosovo daily Express said Kosovar Serbs would be handed some positions of authority.
A Kosovar Serb would be appointed regional police commander but would follow orders from the interior ministry in Pristina, according to the agreement cited by the Express.
Ethnic Serb judges would run courts and have jurisdiction over other legal issues in Serb-majority municipalities while operating within the Kosovar legal framework.
And the deal reportedly stresses that “neither side will block or encourage others to block the other side’s progress in their respective EU paths.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing