The President of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani, said that the request for mutual recognition to be part of a final agreement with Serbia is a necessity, and neither the United States nor the European Union have asked Kosovo to withdraw this request.
During a press conference in Pristina, after the meeting with her counterpart from Malta, George Vella, Osmani was asked to comment on the statements of the US envoy for the Western Balkans, Gabriel Escobar, that Kosovo should support an agreement with Serbia, that it does not involve mutual recognition.
However, Osmani said that it is about a “specific agreement”, which seems to be a reference to a proposal by France and Germany that the media have reported on.
As officials in Serbia have stated, this Franco-German proposal, which is said to have been delivered to leaders in Pristina and Belgrade, provides that Serbia will not prevent Kosovo from joining international organizations, including the United Nations, in exchange for membership of fast of Belgrade in the European bloc.
“Proposals for specific agreements which are discussed in Brussels are another thing. As you know, there was the issue of energy, discussions still continue about the fate of the disappeared by violence or other topics related to freedom of movement. And the efforts of our partners to push all these issues forward in an intensified way,” said Osmani.
“However, there has never been a request, either from the USA or from other partners within the EU, for Kosovo to give up the request for mutual recognition, because everyone understands that it is a necessity that has closed a chapter of painful of what is likely in these decades in the Western Balkans, which have been terrible wars initiated and carried out by the genocidal regime of Serbia”, she added.
