wretched

As the parliament has today approved a new Government in Kosovo, here are some thoughts on its fate. It will be led by the LDK and will have a small majority supported by some minority parties as well as some small parties that have been in opposition during the short life of the VV/LDK coalition.

The main goals of this government are

To get the country safe from the COVID-19 pandemic;

To deal with the negative impact of the pandemic on the economy;

To respond to the Americans and Europeans who are looking for a restart of the stagnant dialogue with Belgrade.

This is a scary agenda, although Kosovo seems to have avoided the worst of COVID-19.

Even a strong one-party majority government (with the required minority participation) would find it difficult to manage these demands. A coalition of several parties with a small majority led by the third of the last election will have significantly more trouble. The VV in the opposition will increase the difficulties again, both in the parliament and on the streets.

What this does is strengthen the connection between the president and the Government. His mechanisms with the Americans have led to a vote of no confidence in the short-lived Government of Albin Kurti. The president will now take the main role in the talks with Belgrade, which Kurti had tried to deny - Thaçi certainly has no interest in leading on COVID-19 or the economy. The LDK must have promised not to contest his leadership in the talks with Belgrade, as a price to get the post of prime minister. The Americans will support him because they have him under control and he is willing to do anything to avoid being indicted by the Special Tribunal in The Hague. This despite the fact that both the Constitutional Court and the parliament have said that talks with Belgrade should be the responsibility of the government and not the president.

Richard Grenell, the US envoy for the Serbia-Kosovo dialogue, says that he is only interested in improving the economic relations between Belgrade and Pristina, and not in the exchange of territories as I and others have said. It is not a reliable thing. Already criticized for his role in this campaign, he wants to offer President Donald Trump a Rose Garden ceremony on the eve of the US elections on November 3. No economic agreement would accomplish this. He needs the territory exchange not only for himself, but also to reaffirm the ethnic nationalist principles of the Trump Administration, but also because he thinks it can be sold as a big plus for peace and stability in the Balkans, solving an issue that neither Clinton could not solve.

This is not true: it solves nothing. An exchange of territories sooner or later will result in instability in Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina and possibly in Macedonia as well. It will also strengthen the grip of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.

But whatever reconciliation is reached in the "Rose Garden" should not last until November 3rd. The civil aviation deal that Grenell says he negotiated has already evaporated without anyone noticing. The probability that neither the Serbian nor the Kosovo parliament will approve the exchange of territories, or that it will not be accepted in the referendums in these countries, will not matter after the elections in the USA. The damage will be done: wherever new borders are drawn, people will move – some voluntarily and some against their will – to the "right" side of their ethnic group. Those who won't move will be evicted.

So I see the new Government - I apologize to Avdullah Hoti - as unfortunate. It will try to pave the way for an agreement that Kosovars, Americans and Europeans will regret. The only winners will be Putin and his minions as well as Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić. Right now, even President Thaçi must have his doubts.