April 20 – Kosovo’s Prime Minister Albin Kurti has accused U.S. special envoy for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Richard Grenell, of being involved in the toppling of his government last month.
PM Kurti held an online press conference with international journalists on Monday, organized by the Austrian journalists association ‘Presseclub Concordia.
“My government was not overthrown for anything else but simply because Ambassador Grenell was in a hurry to sign an agreement with Serbia,” Kurti said during the press conference.
As a participant of the conference, political scientist and researcher Jasmin Mujanović took note of some of Kurti’s statements who claimed that the collapse of his government was a veritable “coup” and Ambassador Grenell was intimately involved in this process. The PM stated that Grenell wants a rushed deal with Serbia that will involve territory exchange and that talks on the matter had begun already during the tenure of Federica Mogherini, and was being directly handled by Serbian PM Aleksander Vucic and President of Kosovo Hashim Thaci. Grenell picked up this idea and has continuously pressured Kurti’s government to drop the tariffs, which he thinks is a “reckless quick fix”.
Kurti suggested that Grenell has been aggressive in pushing for a deal on the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue so he can deliver a political win for Trump in next year’s presidential elections and contrast his administration to those of Clinton, Bush, and Obama, therefore landing a deal without any military involvement.
However, Kurti said that he made it clear to Grenell that any major deal with Serbia would require approval of the people of Kosovo. Additionally, Kosovo’s President Thaci worked to topple his government because he wants to declare a state of energy, to send the army into the streets, to “create incidents”, and thus open the road for a rushed territory exchange deal that will lack democratic oversight, according to Kurti. He hinted that his party will support mass protests against any new government that is formed, adding that a “phase of destabilization will follow.”
According to Kurti, Serbia seeks EU membership, whereas Grenell only cares about “the signature at the bottom of the page, not the text on the page.”
Although he has not seen a map of the land swap, Kurti said that a close advisor to Thaci and a close adviser of his met and discussed a “close outline” of the map, based on which three northern municipalities join Serbia, while parts of Presevo in Serbia join Kosovo. Northern Mitrovica stays in Kosovo, but Serbia gets to have an Association of Serbian Municipalities within Kosovo. However, this deal will not include Serbia’s formal recognition of Kosovo, which according to Kurti is absurd.
Asked about the newly-appointed EU Special Envoy for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue Miroslav Lajčák, Kurti responded that there is skepticism in Kosovo as both Lajčák and Borrell come from states which do not recognize Kosovo’s independence. Nevertheless, Kurti stated that Lajčák’s biggest task must be convincing Vucic to abandon any land swap deal or version of land swap deal.
When comparing the negotiation processes led by the EU and U.S., Kurti said that they “are on two different planets” as there is very little coordination between the two sides, in his view. Although he does not want to choose between the EU and U.S., Kurti emphasized that the only side which benefits from a chasm between the two blocs is Russia, and that some people, especially in the US, would do well to remember that.
Kurti’s government was voted down only 52 days after it was elected due to the PM’s refusal to lift tariffs on Serbian goods, which has made way for more instability in the country as the coronavirus pandemic continues. President Hashim Thaci has urged Kurti’s party to submit a prime minister nominee in order to form a new government, but the PM insists that the new government needs to be established after the coronavirus pandemic is over.
