3 hours agoNovi Sad meeting canceled: It's rumored it's about tensions in the North
Periskopi(5 years ago)
(5 years ago)Despite reports, Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama and Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vuciq, will not speak at tomorrow's conference marking the second anniversary of the founding of Mini-Schengen, which was recently appointed the Open Balkans. The newspaper “Danas” reports today that Rama and Vuciq have cancelled their participation in the conference that [...]
It is claimed that such a change occurred “in the last minute”.
According to unofficial information on which the Serbian media is called, it is scheduled for Serbia's Prime Minister Anna Brnabyq to speak with participants of the so-called Steering Forum instead of Vuciqi, while northern Macedonia Prime Minister Zoran Zaev, whose participation was also announced earlier, will be linked through the video.
The two-day conference “Western Balkans, a region, a step towards the EU common market” is being held today and tomorrow in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Organisers of this event are the Fund for European Affairs of Vojvodina, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Regional Forum of Young Leaders.
Initially it was planned for Rama, Vuciq and Zaev to speak tomorrow on the so-called governing panel, as well as address the media later.
This event is being held on the anniversary of the creation of the Schengen Small Initiative for Economic Co-operation in the Balkans, whose first meeting was held in 2019 in Novi Sad, and which initiative recently changed its name to “Open Balkans”.
The initiative brought Albania, Serbia and Northern Macedonia together in a goal.
“Danas” writes that they were unable to reveal from representatives of Serbian and Albanian authorities why Rama and Vuciqi cancelled the turnout.
Diplomatic lines speculate that the change could directly be linked to current tensions in Kosovo.
It must be remembered that the Albanian prime minister visited Kosovo yesterday, where he sent clear criticism of official Belgrade, and expressed full support for Kosovo authorities.
Rama at the joint conference with Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti, among other things, said that Kosovo is fully right about setting reciprocity of license plates with Serbia, and stressed that resolving the problem is dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia.
Serbia, in the first place, must recognise this irreversible reality and it is unfortunate that instead of the concrete progress of dialogue and liberation from the past, we are now witnessing the Serbian Army's theatre maneuvers on the border with the sovereign state of Kosovo. Those maneuvers do not actually protect citizens in northern Kosovo, as claimed by the leadership of official Belgrade, even by several ghosts of possible army generals in the field of war more than 20 years ago that they came out of the grave with the claim that the integrity and security of Serbian citizens in Kosovo are being protected. The fact is that Serbian citizens in Kosovo live under no means, even being paid electricity bills from the Government here, as nobody in the Balkans only, but in the world”, Rama said.
