US and EU ‘too soft’ on Serbia, Kosovo PM says

The EU and US have been “too soft” on Serbia and should set a deadline for it to adopt sanctions on Russia, the Kosovan prime minister has said.

Albin Kurti said Belgrade needed to side with the west against Moscow to give Kosovo reassurance that it was committed to normalising relations.

Brussels and Washington “need to change their approach and give a timeline to Serbia . . . to put sanctions on the Russian Federation and to quit trying to sit on three or four stools”, Kurti told the Financial Times in an interview.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has maintained close ties with the Kremlin and Beijing while pursuing membership in the EU and a constructive relationship with Washington. Vučić has refused to implement sanctions against Russia but has allowed Serbian-made ammunition to be delivered to Ukraine.

“Once Serbia puts sanctions on the Russian Federation, then that would be a moment when they would show that they want to get integrated into EU, and Serbia without Russia cannot threaten the security of the continent. So then, I could trust that they basically want peace. And US and EU would not try to appease them anymore.”

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and relations remain tense. The region is still regarded by diplomats and analysts as a powder keg.

EU negotiators, with US support, last year brokered a tentative deal under which Serbia would informally recognise Kosovo’s statehood while Pristina would provide a degree of self-governance for 10 municipalities with Serb majorities. The agreement was never implemented and tensions flared over Kosovan authorities attempting to assert full authority over Serbian-majority areas in northern Kosovo.

In September, there was a shootout between Kosovan police and dozens of Serbian paramilitaries that had barricaded themselves in a monastery in northern Kosovo. Belgrade denied any involvement in the attack even though the paramilitaries had a large cache of Serbian-made weapons.

Kurti’s relations with Brussels and Washington have been badly strained by what western officials regard as his heavy-handed and counter-productive attempts to tighten Pristina’s grip on Serbian-majority areas.

After Serbs boycotted local elections last year, Pristina installed the ethnic-Albanian mayors who had won by default in Serbian-majority areas, sometimes with only a handful of votes. Kosovo has also deployed heavily armed special police to the north.

Last week, Kosovan police raided several branches of a Serbian bank in the north of the country and seized Serbian currency. The dinar was outlawed as a means of exchange in Kosovo earlier this year even though many of Kosovo’s Serbs are paid salaries or pensions in the currency. Kosovo uses the euro.

Kurti, who has been premier for three years and faces elections next year, said the restrictions stemmed from his country’s constitution, which stipulates only one means of payment. He said two-thirds of Serbs received benefits from Kosovo in euros.

The prime minister declined to say when Pristina would pull its special police back from the northern municipalities, but he insisted that complaints from Serbs about their presence were receding.

Kurti conceded there were “sometimes differences” with his European and US allies “when it comes to strategies, operations and tactics on the ground on one hand, and when it comes to relations with Serbia”, but not on values or principles.

He said the west’s “soft” approach was “a consequence of having high hopes that sooner rather than later Serbia will jump into the western democratic camp. In my view, we have waited for too long to be still hopeful”.