Kurt attacks the West because it's going to “through” Serbia: Bridge on Iber, Serbia wants to turn into new border

(Radio Free Europe) Prime Minister Albin Kurti has charged the West on Thursday that if it was “Serbia due to fears and concerns of destabilising, adding that it is not “being paid” and that Kosovo is “paid for it.

Kurti's government has been criticised by several Western countries and the EU for a series of decisions in the Serb-run north during this year, where he has said he wants to impose heavily and law.

He said that the West, being very careful “” with Serbia, is also making Kosovo “pay for it and that is not fair”.

Speaking in an interview for Reuters news agency on Friday, Kurti said: “I think that the petting of Serbia [from the West] over the two and a half years since the Russian aggression in Ukraine has begun is not paying off, so someone has to say quite”.

Serbia's powerful “lines with the Russian Federation and deep historical, economic and cultural ties between them are making the West very careful with Serbia”, Kurti said.

Serbia, unlike EU countries and other Western countries, refuses to impose sanctions on Russia for the invasion of Ukraine from Moscow.

It continues to maintain warm ties with Russia, even though it has said it supports Ukraine's territorial integrity.

In recent months, Serbia has signed an agreement with France for the purchase of fighter aircraft worth about 2.7 billion euros, as a memorandum of understanding for lithium with the EU.

It [Serbia] has also found partners in the West because of fears and concerns some diplomats have that destabilisation may happen again. Before the war in Ukraine I have seen some very relaxed Western diplomats, now the same are very scared. I think they were wrong then and they're wrong now”, he added.

“Brussels push Serbia”

Kurti criticised the European Union, whose two neighbouring countries are aiming to join once, that it has not reacted to Serbia's <x0-edge”.

“Brussels should play the role of the judge who plays the pipi whenever there are violations of the” Agreement, Kurti said, referring to the Basic Agreement that Kosovo and Serbia reached under EU mediation in early 1923 for normalisation of relations.

The European Union has consistently criticised the parties for failing to implement this agreement.

Kurti has insisted that the agreement be signed and that Serbia withdraw a letter that then Prime Minister Anna Brnabyq sent to the EU last year, where he voiced reservations about the agreement, as well as to hand over Kosovo Milan Radojciqi and his group, suspected of armed attack on Banjska.

“What we have seen these two years is that Brussels has not reacted when Belgrade has violated the agreement. We want Brussels to pressure Serbia to respect the agreement and engage with good will and constructively in its full implementation”, Kurti said.

Kurt's government banned the Serbian dinar, closed several Serbian branch offices, such as Serb parallel institutions in a series of decisions this year, while also aiming to open the bridge over the Iber River, for which it has been criticised for endangering unrest and instability.

Regarding the bridge over Iber, which divides Mitrovica south with an Albanian majority and in the Serb majority north, Kurti accused Serbia of wanting to keep it closed.

Serbia wants to keep the bridge in Mitrovica closed because it wants to keep the dream of partitioning Kosovo alive. She wants to turn the bridge over Iber into a new border. This will not happen”, he said.

Now the bridge is open only to pedestrians, and Italian KFOR soldiers are on it. Kosovo Police members are close to it as well. / REL