French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a fresh plea to the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo to break an impasse in talks to mend ties as the continent faces its worst security crisis in decades.
(Bloomberg) — French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a fresh plea to the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo to break an impasse in talks to mend ties as the continent faces its worst security crisis in decades.
In a joint letter to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, the leaders urged their Balkan counterparts to move past differences “at a moment of crucial importance for security” in Europe, according to the letter, which the Balkan officials made public.
The long-running dispute between Serbia and its former province, which declared independence in 2008, has hampered the two nations’ aspirations to join the European Union. The letter signals that Scholz and Macron seek to reassert the EU’s role in resolving the clash.
The EU has made normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo a condition for joining the 27-member bloc. The German and French leaders deputized their respective chief foreign-policy advisers, Jens Ploetner and Emmanuel Bonne, to join the EU’s envoy on the matter, Miroslav Lajcak, in the mediation efforts.
The Balkan adversaries must show “maximum decisiveness” and a readiness to make difficult decisions, the letter said.
Along with the EU, the US has been instrumental in talks, having managed to defuse a flare-up last month involving Kosovo regulations on IDs and license plates.
Serbia refuses to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty. In the late 1990s, officials in Belgrade began a crackdown against ethnic Albanian guerrillas in Kosovo in a spiral of violence pitting separatists against repressive Serbian rule. NATO air strikes in 1999 forced the Serb troops to pull out after more than 10,000 Kosovars, mostly ethnic-Albanians, died.
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