Aleksandar Vucic’s government in Serbia has been sabotaging negotiations with Kosovo over the latter’s international status. That much is apparent to anyone who has followed the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue since its inception in 2011.
What has only recently become clear, however, although it has been discussed openly in diplomatic circles for some time, is what exactly his government’s preferred solution to the dispute is.
If Serbia is not prepared to eventually recognize Kosovo’s independence within the context of its own accession to the EU, how does it propose to resolve the impasse between the two states?
The diplomatic chatter has now become explicit government policy: partition.
Civil society, academics, and former government officials alike have all made clear why such “border corrections” in the Balkans are a certain recipe for chaos.
If we have learned anything from the region’s post-Ottoman history, it is that “ethnic partition” is a byword for conflict.
What is still more jarring is the extent to which Vucic and Co.’s proposed bargain over Kosovo clearly has more to do with Bosnia and Herzegovina than with Serbia’s erstwhile province.
Vucic’s rhetoric concerning the whole matter makes clear that he and his government, especially the Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, are not interested in “reconciliation” with any of Serbia’s neighbors.
Their aim is to contest the post-Yugoslav settlement in the region, which saw Slobodan Milosevic’s attempt to carve out a “Greater Serbia” from the old federation defeated in four consecutive wars.
This is not ancient history, it is the immediate context. Neither Vucic nor Dacic have ever expressed an iota of contrition for these wars, for their direct role in them as members of Milosevic’s government, or for the nearly 150,000 deaths they caused across the region.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
