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| Bodo Weber |
The German analyst Bodo Weber says he would be surprised if a comprehensive, legally binding agreement between Kosovo and Serbia would be reached in 2019.
The reason for this, according to the German analyst, is that all parties spent a year and a half to negotiations, in the new phase in the dialogue to promote the idea of demarcation and border correction, respectively exchange of territory or partition of Kosovo."This started as an initial political turnaround from Belgrade, and seems to have escalated into an effort to exploit a dose of Western crisis and political weakness, encouraged by a stakeholder from the EU and the US. But it turned out that the West, above all the EU, was not as weak as some hoped for, "Weber told the Serbian newspaper" Blic ".
The German analyst says this is why the negotiations in 2018 ended entirely in blockade, while Belgrade's attempt to push the dialogue out of the framework initially defined, that is accepted by all negotiating parties - recognizing the reality of Kosovo's loss by Serbia and focusing on the comprehensive normalization of the two countries and to ensure the normal life of the Serbs living in the state of Kosovo was rewarded with the prospect of EU membership and support for Serbia's economic empowerment - suffered a failure to reject the idea of ethno -territoriality from Germany and most of the EU member states, and the resistance of Albanian parliamentary parties.
"I suspect that all negotiators have given up the idea of sharing and exchanging territory, but it will not pass. But if this idea were to pass, it would not bring stability and would be fatal to the lives of Kosovo Serbs in the South and North of the Ibër River. The road to the final agreement leads through a full "reset" of negotiations, return to the initial framework of dialogue, to political reality, and not through a comprehensive campaign to support the state of Kosovo by Belgrade authorities," Weber said.
"The focus should be on what would guarantee that the agreement will truly be historic - full normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo, as well as the bilateral relations between the two democratic states, on everyday life, the daily problems of Kosovo Serbs , security and socioeconomic," he said.