Eurasia Press & News
Slobodan Samardžić, full professor of the Belgrade Faculty of Political Sciences, says in an interview with Danas that he fears that Vučić will sign the European proposal for the issue of Kosovo and Metohija, because, he says, his policy has always led to that. He believes that this signing would mean “de iure” recognition of Kosovo.
“There is a red line that Vučić emphasizes that he will not cross. But you have points 2 and 4 that apply directly and are not subject to annexes, where it is said that relations between Serbia and Kosovo will be based on the principles of the United Nations – sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity and that Serbia will not prevent Kosovo from joining any international organization. says Samardžić, referring to the version of the agreement that, he notes, appeared in an Albanian media.
Vučić, he adds, will not admit to the domestic public that he confessed, which would be, says this former minister for Kosovo and Metohija, a typical Vučić construction.
Our interlocutor is also the president of the State-Building Movement of Serbia and a member of the presidency of the Movement for the Defense of Kosovo and Metohija, who operate within the block that opposes signing the European proposal, together with Zavetniki, Dveri, New DSS and POKS.
*If Miroslav Lajčak says that both sides have “in principle accepted the proposal” of the agreement, do you think that means that Pristina has accepted the formation of the Union of Serbian Municipalities?
I think that Lajčak wants to contribute to a good atmosphere, so he says that both sides are ready in principle. When you say that, it means that there are a thousand unsolved questions, and in such matters the devil hides in the details.
The fact that ZSO was accepted by Serbia means nothing, because it has the status of local self-government in independent Kosovo. If that is enough for Vučić, it is not enough for Serbia.
He has already denied the announcement that he will not go to Brussels if there are at least guarantees for the formation of the ZSO. I think that we should not go to Brussels and we should not accept a document that evidently concludes the matter with the de iure recognition of Kosovo.
* Will Pristina suffer pressures to form a JSO or Belgrade to accept a JSO that is harmonized with the Kosovo Constitution and not with the Brussels Agreement?
ZSO is a concept of the Brussels Agreement and is already based on the Constitution and laws of Kosovo. As for the concrete elaboration of it, it was taken from Ahtisaari’s plan.
The Constitutional Court of Kosovo reacted in 2016 and stopped that procedure, and in 2013 the Albanian parliament in Kosovo and Metohija ratified that agreement as an international agreement and it had the obligation to implement it.
The argument of the Constitutional Court was that it is an ethnic community, and in the Constitution of Kosovo, which was written according to Ahtisaari’s plan, the Community of Municipalities is not defined either ethnically or non-ethnically. The Constitutional Court issued a political ban because there is no logic in the Constitution not to implement it.
Vučić handed over to Albanian Kosovo seven jurisdictions that Serbia had managed until then, the Albanian side only had to do one thing – the formation of the ZSO. He fulfilled his obligations immediately, and this is not done even if the Brussels Agreement is fair – which it is not. He did this to ingratiate himself with Brussels.
This is an example of a gambler’s policy led by Vučić. He consciously reduced the room for maneuver and now he doesn’t even get that insignificant thing, such as ZSO.
The discussion on the ZSO is likely to be only part of the new negotiating framework, and not something that precedes that framework.
*To these words of yours about recognition, someone from the regime would answer you “well, Vučić told you all ten times at the session of the Assembly – there is no recognition and a seat in the UN”. Why don’t you trust Vučić?
Well, because he has pursued such a policy until now, because with him there is a difference between words and deeds. He said a lot of things, starting with that ZSO, until the last fraud around the barricades, when he told the Serbs to back off, because they have Serbia’s guarantees for KM plates. The representatives of the Serbs told him that there would be no life for them if the barricades were removed, and he deceived them with promises.
The next day, the Albanian police set up obstacles there, controlled everything and took KM plates from everyone.
How can he have red lines if he signs a document that has those two dots?
The majority of Serbian citizens are weak, but they are not stupid. They are too smart for a man who talks one thing and does another to carry them across the water thirsty.
I am a supporter of frozen conflict. We have in mind the Cypriot model. It was a difficult case of civil war, and for over fifty years there has been peace, although the conflict has not been resolved.
There will be no peace even if Vučić signs this proposal. The Serbs did not live there for 20 years under peaceful conditions, but under violent ones. Two-thirds of the people moved out, property was seized, those who live south of the Ibar, and there are more of them, live in apartheid. Excuse me, what kind of peace is that? Do we keep it?
We have to freeze Vučić’s policy, because if he thinks that there will be no conflict after he signs, he is mistaken.
*Does a frozen conflict lead us to an armed conflict?
KFOR and EULEX will withdraw after signing the recognition, the EU members who did not recognize Kosovo will do so, because Serbia did. You have a whole chain reaction if we were to sign. That’s just an undefended garden, in the vernacular.
With a frozen conflict, peace is very fragile, but you have a way to contact KFOR and some services of UNMIC and EULEX, and you have a reporting mechanism that goes to the United Nations twice a year.
There will be consequences for both signing and not signing. Only the consequences of the first one are far greater and worse. There is no good solution. We are for that fragile peace, not open conflict.
When Serbia came to power, Serbia had no support from anyone in the world for Kosovo policy, that’s why we gave in, but we kept the front. Already since 2004, we had some support from Russia and China and some EU countries. We were in a worse situation than Vučić was. He had the very active support of both China and Russia. After the Ukrainian war, that changed a little, but not fundamentally.
This is now the hunt of the West in the dark to connect the Ukrainian case and Kosovo. Sorry, they have nothing to do with each other, but they do have something to do with that violent action that puts Serbia now in front of an ultimatum and imposes sanctions on Russia. You know, imposing sanctions on Russia would be as arbitrary as banning Dostoyevsky. Anything they don’t like will go away. It’s a very realistic scenario.
When you ask me what the way out is, I can hardly tell you that fairy tale. But the first step is not to give Vučić the opportunity to do it, he should be made to feel the fear of doing it. For that, it is necessary to mass the opposition’s strength of resistance. Kosovo is not an ideological, party issue.
*But Vučić says that worse times are approaching, the escalation of the war in Ukraine. Do you agree with that argument?
I don’t trust Vučić. He has made so many fraudulent statements and is leading an unstable and arbitrary policy. If he said what day it is, I would look at the calendar first to check. I don’t believe him either.
You cannot trust such a ruler who has broken his word a thousand times, and when you catch him doing it, he says ‘I did, so what?’
The signing issue showed that you have no opposition front against this dictatorial rule. The Vučić dictatorship is there to hand over Kosovo, a democratic government would not do that, and that was demonstrated from 2000 to 2012.
Isolation is a danger, but I do not believe in isolation when it comes to the EU. Why would the EU impose sanctions on us, unless Washington asks for it, because we are a small coin to change in the fight that the USA is leading against Russia.
I lived in the period of sanctions in the nineties, people are afraid that those bad times will not return and that feeling is being manipulated.
It’s hunting in the dark, the fog they led us into so you can’t see further than five meters, everyone can do what they want. And we don’t have a government that could dispel the fog.
*Are the criticisms of the current regime regarding Kosovo justified by the authorities of the DSS, such as the release of Albanian prisoners from prison?
They didn’t. They accuse us of not doing anything during the March pogrom, and we couldn’t prevent it, Unmik and Kfor were in power there. Second, it is our fault that Kosovo declared independence? Wait, that’s what people say who didn’t prevent something, but taught.
As for the release of the Albanians, it was at a time of great pressure. We didn’t have the support of anyone except the West, who liked the change of government, because they thought they had an influence on the country and its government.
They gave us material means for recovery and survival, Russia did not participate. In 2001, at a meeting in Belgrade (Vojislav), Putin told Kostunica that he could not do anything about Kosovo, because Russia is in the process of reform and that until it gets back on its feet it cannot deal with it.
Three years later, at the meeting in Sochi, he already gave a signal that he could help, and in 2007 he definitely protected us with the threat of a veto, because the plan was for Ahtisaari’s plan to become a new resolution of the UN Security Council and replace Resolution 1244.
The lists of Albanian prisoners were reviewed, I did not work on it as an advisor to the minister, but I know that my colleagues said that there are many people in that number who did not get their hands bloody. The Serbian police arrested without order or evidence. There were also terrorists, but the condition of the West was to release all of them. The condition is that they would help us rebuild the country. At that time, there was no alternative either in the country or outside it.
*Do you have a problem with the events at the Sretenji protest near the Presidency?
I don’t have a problem, but I have a complaint against the organizers. That protest should not be made like that. I have no problem with those words, which I certainly could not accept. I find it interesting that two thousand people gathered. People did not come at the invitation of the National Patrols, but on the subject of Kosovo. Vučić and the pro-European opposition that protects him should also think about this.
*And do you have a problem with the arrests of Zlatanović and Knežević that followed?
I am against apprehension and indictments, because the reason can only be that they are verbal offenses. For example, Vuk Drašković was detained after March 9, but was released, because there were no criminal grounds. Verbal delict was removed from the criminal code a long time ago, and now it is introduced through the window.
