State Department spokesman Ned Price said that rooting out corruption is one of the goals of the US Administration in the Western Balkans

“So one of our goals when it comes to the Western Balkans is working with governments and working with people of the region to target and to take out and to root out corruption. And sanctions are one important tool to do that,” he told a news briefing.

According to Price, sanctions are one of the important tools in rooting out corruption in the region.

Price said that the Western Balkans is a dynamic region attractive to both China and Russia but for different reasons.

“We believe that our shared interests and our shared values form the predicate for a relationship that in many ways is unique and distinct from the visions of a relationship that Russia or China would have for the region. So whether it is development, whether it is security, whether it’s economics, whether it is humanitarian assistance, we have made very clear our desire to be a partner to the countries of the Western Balkans and to have both implicitly – and in some cases, explicitly – also been very clear about what – the partnership that we bring is distinct from the relationship that countries like the two you mentioned would seek to have in the region,” he said.