“Agreement divides Kosovo into Albanian and Serbian part”

SOURCE: TANJUG
NEW YORK -- The Brussels agreement divides Kosovo into an “Albanian heartland with a Serbian appendage”, the New York Times has reported.


  

The text’s author Columbia University Professor David Phillips assessed that Serbia did not recognize Kosovo’s independence and that the agreement accepted Serbia’s continued role in protecting the interests of Serbs in northern Kosovo.

“In effect, it divides Kosovo into an Albanian heartland with a Serbian appendage,” Phillips said and added that “the deal validates the violent nationalistic agenda of a greater Serbia advanced by Slobodan Milošević“.

However, he saod tat tje Brussels agreement “also encourages aspirations for a greater Albania among ethnic Albanians in Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro”.

Phillips believes that “the deal will not reconcile the two Balkan nations or help them gain admission to the European Union”.

According to him, “the West needs a fresh approach for the Balkans, an arrangement somewhere between partition into monoethnic mini-states and a continentwide superstate”.

“This middle way — call it “interest solidarity” — would preserve national sovereignty and borders, while enabling members of ethnic and other groups to cooperate with their counterparts in the region, in fields like trade, transport, education, media and the arts,” he added.

Phillips noted that “the lure of EU membership was supposed to overcome those enmities” but that the attempt was not successful.

“As Turkey has learned well, some European nations just don’t want a majority-Muslim country in their club. Some also disparage the Balkans as bastions of fiscal instability and as havens for drug traffickers and criminal gangs,” he pointed out.

“Building ties of common interest beyond its borders has helped stabilize Northern Ireland since 1998. It could improve relations between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the Middle East, and offer new outlets for the dreams of ‘stateless’ Kurds in Turkey, Iraq and Iran,” he stressed.

“This will work only under governments that promote minority rights, and among parties with leaders ready for peace,” Phillips concluded.