Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and the Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, are trying to benefit politically from their dispute over potential “border corrections” as part of a deal with Serbia, Behlul Beqaj, a former adviser to Thaci told BIRN.
Both the President and the Prime Minister have “identical” motives and are equally “manipulative”, he maintained.
“Their disagreements are reflections of the evaluations of the personal benefits – and do not have to do with proper policy-making or problem-solving,” Beqaj insisted.
He added that while Thaci believes he can benefit politically from concluding the EU-led dialogue with Serbia, Haradinaj thinks he will benefit by not leading the negotiations.
After Thaci stated that a proposal for ethnic Albanians living in southern Serbia to join Kosovo would be among the topics at his EU- mediated meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic on September 7, Haradinaj denounced the idea of border corrections as bringing “new tragedies to the Balkans”.
“The continued public discussion on redesigning the border and the exchange of territories is an invitation for new tragedies in the Balkans that will lead to destabilisation, and risks long-term political and security investments for stability and peace in Kosovo and the region,” Haradinaj wrote on Facebook on Friday.
But Beqaj said the two leaders “differ only in terms of their approach”, and both “see the dialogue as an opportunity to empower their positions in the political hierarchy and not to solve open problems between Serbia and Kosovo”.
Borders was already an issue over which the two politicians had clashed.
After a long-lasting process, Thaci only just managed to convince Haradinaj to ratify an agreement on border demarcation with Montenegro in March 2018.
Haradinaj was one of the strongest opponents of the agreement with Montenegro, which Thaci had signed in August 2015.
It took more than two years before Kosovo’s parliament ratified the agreement, amid teargas used by opposition MPs, including those from Haradinaj’s AAK party, and violent protests outside parliament.
The issue was one of the reasons why the government then led by Isa Mustafa fell from power.
Months later, after entering a coalition with the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, founded by Thaci, Haradinaj became Kosovo’s new Prime Minister.
Then, as partners in coalition, following a joint statement from the Kosovo and Montenegro presidents, saying they wanted a joint working body formed to identify remaining disagreements on the border, Haradinaj backed the deal, urging MPs to vote for demarcation.
For more read the full of article at The Balkaninsight
