Balkan Expert: The Ibër Bridge issue is worth handling in dialogue, at least as a friendly gesture to the EU in front of Kosovo

And the United States, NATO and the European Union seek to resolve the Ibër Bridge issue under dialogue in Brussels, the Balkan expert in the International Crisis Group, Marko Prelec, has said this issue is worth handling in dialogue -- at least as a friendly gesture to the European Union for support it has given to Kosovo.

I think there's been a time for dialogue to be in some kind of coma and this has to do with its basic goal, that the parties push towards normalisation in a comprehensive manner. Clearly, this is not happening, and there seems to be little prospect in resurrecting that political dialogue towards normalisation in the near future, at least not this year. But what dialogue can do is address lower-level issues as the question of what to do with the main bridge in Mitrovica”, Prelec says.

He believes opening the bridge without international co-ordination could spur new tensions.

But I don't necessarily expect any kind of violence, we can see demonstrations. My impression, stressing that several months have passed since I have visited Kosovo and things may have changed, but since the last time I've been in the north, my impression is that the population there is quite scared and that it doesn't feel like it's in a position to perform acts that show the strength that has been proved in the past with the establishment of barricades or individual assigned to perform actions, that some would name as paramilitary, and others as terrorism against the state. There seems to be no readiness for now in northern Kosovo to do something like that”, he said.

Prelec said that opening the bridge, more than anything else, is a symbolic act.

There are three bridges in the city, two of which are open to car traffic, while the main bridge, is and has been, as long as I remember open to pedestrians and is widely used. I've been through it many times myself. You can see people going from north to south for purchase, from south to north for meetings, so this is not like the collapse of the Berlin Wall, it's a symbolic act because it's in the centre and because immediately after NATO's 1999 intervention, this bridge was the hub where the Serb paramilitary presence in the north tried to stop armed Albanians from crossing the bridge, so there were the so-called guard of the” bridge, he said. / VOA