Tag: European Union
Amnesty for what?
Rilind Latifi, a Kosovar graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, explains:
The Kosovo parliament last week rejected a draft law on amnesty required as a result of the agreement reached on April 19 between the prime-ministers Hashim Thaçi and Ivica Dačić. The law is intended to facilitate integration of the Serbs in the north. It offers them protection from legal action due to their resistance to Kosovo’s constitutional order since the 2008 declaration of independence, after which they burned customs points and erected multiple barricades blocking free movement (including for the EU rule of law mission, NATO’s KFOR, and the Kosovo police). Serbia views the amnesty law as a tradeoff and precondition dismantling Belgrade’s governing structures in the north. Read more
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Meanwhile in the Balkans
I did this interview Wednesday for Bedrudin Brljavac of the Turkish Anadolu agency in Sarajevo:
- In the aftermath of the accession of Croatia to the EU, do you think that the EU doors are still open to other Balkan countries as well, or has an idea about enlargement recently lose popularity among Europeans?
The door doesn’t really open until a country is ready to join. I think it will open for other Balkans countries, but only when they are well prepared.
- Today there has appeared an interview with former Higher representative Paddy Ashdown who said that after Croatia joined the EU and Serbia joins in the future, Bosnia will stay isolated. Do you think that Bosnia can indeed stay isolated and out of the EU in the long run? Do you think that the “process of Palestinisation of Bosnia” is real and possible? Read more
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Peace picks June 17-21
1. The Future of Stability Operations: Lessons from Afghanistan, American Security Project, Monday June 17 / 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Venue: American Security Project
1100 New York Avenue, NW · Suite 710W, Washington, DC
7th Floor West Tower
Speakers: Sloan Mann, Eythan Sontag, Frank Kearney III, Howard Clark
The international community has learned a great deal about how to conduct stability operations in the last 12 years. This event will be a fact-based discussion with leading experts on stability operations. The panel will discuss key lessons from the experience in Afghanistan and how they can be applied to future conflict environments.
RSVP through email to:
events@americansecurityproject.org Read more
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To Albin and Shpend from Ed
Ed Joseph, my colleague here at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, offers this open memo to our recent visitors from Kosovo, Albin Kurti and Shpend Ahmeti. They lead the “Self-Determination” Movement, which advocates a referendum on union with Albania and opposed the April agreement on normalization of relations with Belgrade. I will of course be prepared to publish their reply, should one be received:
MEMO
To: Albin Kurti; Shpend Ahmeti
From: Edward P. Joseph; Washington, DC
Date: 6 June, 2013
Subject: Five takeaways for Vetevendosje from the Visit to Washington
I’m sure you both have gotten a lot out of your visit. It was good to see you at the event at SAIS; I noted your diligent note-taking and was pleased to see that you saw this public event as a real exchange — both an opportunity for you to voice your views, including to a member of the Serbian Embassy, and as well to listen. Permit me to share five points that I hope you will consider further:
1. Speech may be free; but positions have their costs.
While you are free to voice your opinion on most anything — Serbia’s failure to change; unification with Albania, for example — you should note that free speech has its costs. Harping about Serbia’s internal failures opens the door wider for others to harp about organ or drug trafficking in Kosovo. You may not see an equivalence, and there may not be one; but the more you stray into comments about neighboring countries, the more it will seem to justify unflattering charges about Kosovo. It is your right to complain about unfair Serbian treatment of Kosovo; but it is foolish to wail about all that Serbia needs to change. Let others judge Serbia’s fitness; stick to commenting about the fitness of Kosovo. Read more
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Thaci: a fine performance
I tweeted most of the substance of what Kosovo Prime Minister Thaci had to say today at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies. He was moderate, clear and careful. He defended the agreement he reached in April with his Serbian counterpart, Ivica Dacic, and the implementation plan that has been elaborated since. He looked forward to further agreements on electricity and telecommunications by June 20. He said nothing I heard that would make trouble for his negotiating partners in Belgrade, though the press may spin things in the other direction.
Thaci outlined steps that will be taken to implement the April agreement on regularizing the north, a small portion of Kosovo’s territory still controlled by Serbia. He made it clear the changes would come peacefully, in consultation with the northerners. My guess is that those consultations are of necessity mostly between the northerners and Belgrade, not between the northerners and Pristina. He underlined that barricades would be removed with KFOR cooperation to allow freedom of movement and commerce, rule of law would be established in cooperation with the European Union mission for that purpose, development funding would be made available, elections would be held with support from the Organization for Security and Cooperation and in Europe (OSCE) and after that police commanders would be chosen for the north in accordance with the procedures in the agreement. Read more
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The West needs to explain
Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai, one of the better speakers on the hummus circuit these days, started this evening’s rhetorical stemwinder at the US/Islamic World Forum in Doha pretty much the way all the other non-American speakers did: with the failure of the American efforts to produce an Israel/Palestine peace agreement on the two-state model. He has no objection to Israel he said, but the Palestinians are likewise entitled to a secure and peaceful state.
But he veered quickly to colonial Afghanistan, British rule and the Americans as heirs to it, stopping along the way to note the Soviet invasion. Hold on tight now, because the roller coaster ride is about to start. Read more
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