Former US envoy for Kosovo and Serbia, Richard Grenell, just lately appointed as Trump’s particular envoy for particular missions, criticised the Kosovo prime minister, scary bewilderment in Kosovo proper earlier than the vote on Sunday.
US President Donald Trump’s administration all of the sudden grew to become concerned in Kosovo simply because the Western Balkan nation entered the ultimate levels of the parliamentary electoral race scheduled for this Sunday.
As incumbent centre-left Prime Minister Albin Kurti wraps up his marketing campaign to win a transparent majority for his second mandate, Washington’s harsh criticism may undermine his political standing within the nation.
On Friday, Kurti advised the press in Pristina that “Kosovo’s relationship with Washington is at present at its greatest degree since its starting.”
Richard Grenell, the previous US envoy for Serbia and Kosovo in Trump’s first administration, replied on X, saying Kurti’s phrases had been “delusional”.
“Relations have by no means been decrease. Albin Kurti has been condemned by the primary Trump administration, the Biden Administration, NATO, the EU, the US embassy, Anthony Blinken,” he mentioned.
In a earlier X publish early this week, Grenell labelled Kurti as an “unreliable companion for Washington”.
US change of tone ‘bewildering’
For Kosovo and its Albanian majority, relations with the US have been very important because the battle with Belgrade within the late Nineties, adopted by a 1999 NATO intervention and the important thing management of the US army forces that waged struggle on Slobodan Milošević’s Serbia.
In Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, one can see boulevards and monuments devoted to the outstanding figures of the Clinton administration who took the initiative to intervene in opposition to Serbia.
To be on dangerous phrases with the US could be a political loss for a Kosovar Albanian political chief, particularly whereas the ethnic tensions with the Serb neighborhood and Serbia are souring, and the financial disaster is scary rising resentment in opposition to the incumbent authorities.
“The Trump administration’s diplomatic offensive in opposition to the outgoing prime minister sounded somewhat worrying in Pristina after a long time of wonderful relations with the US,” mentioned Eraldin Fazliu, political editor of Kohavision or KTV information channel.
“Grenell, who now has a fairly essential place within the Trump administration, has had a very bullying strategy to Kurti lately.”
“Now we have seen that he interfered in our elections by mainly saying that Kurti has not been a very good companion to the US,” he added.
Serbs count on positives from Trump
Not like in Pristina, the place Washington’s new Balkans diplomacy provoked political disarray, within the Serb a part of Mitrovica, there are hopes for a brand new season of excellent relations between the Serbs and the Trump administration, says Aleksandar Rapajić from a Serb NGO in Mitrovica.
“We count on that the brand new (US) administration will convey new energy, contemporary blood on this course of and can begin to discover some options, and never simply to have conferences and discussions. So, I can say that Serb expectations from Serb neighborhood in Kosovo could be very excessive that that is going to enhance their place in Kosovo”.
Belgrade and Pristina have didn’t implement the Brussels agreements in regards to the normalisation of their relations.
ADVERTISEMENTIn response to the 2013 Brussels accords, Serbia ought to take steps in direction of recognising Kosovo as an impartial state. In change, Pristina is meant to grant the Serbs dwelling in Kosovo the suitable to create an affiliation of Serb municipalities with a sure diploma of autonomy.
The US contingent and the spine of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, KFOR, relies at Camp Bondsteel.
