Pristina: We have the votes in CoE, Serbia lost the battle

NEWS 03.01.202316:15
PATRICK HERTZOG / AFP

Kosovo’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora Kreshnik Ahmeti said that, after Kosovo submitted its Council of Europe (CoE) membership application, Serbia sent a number of “non-papers” to the Council of Europe but that “it lost that battle.”

Kosovo has secured support for the vote, as well as a legal interpretation according to which there are no obstacles for Kosovo on this path, Ahmeti told the Pristina news agency Kosovapress.com.

The Deputy Minister noted that Serbia has always been active in opposing Kosovo in the case of the CoE, and that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called a meeting of the Council for National Security on May 11 last year, prior to Kosovo’s application for CoE membership.

Ahmeti added he can say with certainty that “Serbia has lost the battle in the Council of Europe,” that it is a fact that “the legal interpretation shows that Kosovo can become a member of the Council of Europe” and that it has the support for it.

He said he is hoping for “Serbia’s but also the European Union’s constructive approach to the Brussels dialogue.”

“We hope that we will have a more constructive approach of Belgrade in this dialogue, but also a different approach of the European Union and other Western countries in which the card of neutrality is not played in situations in which it is clear who is responsible, like we had the situation with the barricades last year, with the kidnapping and beating up of Serbs by Belgrade’s illegal structures, attacks on journalists, firearm assaults on the Kosovo police, attacks on EULEX patrols, attacks on KFOR. Things should be called by their proper name,” said Kosovo’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Diaspora.

Ahmeti said Serbia has not discontinued its so-called campaign for the withdrawal of Kosovo’s recognition, but that “it has achieved no results.”