American Congressmen in the Balkans, Visiting Presevo

They will be expected from Serbia's Parliament Speaker Anna Brnabiq, in Belgrade, from where they will go to Presevo.

The mayor of this municipality in southern Serbia, Ardita Sinani, wrote on her Facebook account that “Preseva welcomes the US Congress delegation”.

“A historic moment for the” Valley, according to it.

At the initiative of Congresswoman Self, members of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Policy Committee adopted a bill in January this year urging US Secretary of State to prepare a comprehensive report on the position of minorities in Serbia, with special focus on Albanians in the Presevo Valley, reports REL, broadcast Periscope.

More than 60,000 Albanians live in Serbia, who make up the fourth largest minority there, according to the last census in 2022.

In international reports, the Presevo Valley, which includes Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanocin, is considered completely isolated and is said to receive attention only in election time.

A day earlier, Self and Submanyam stayed in Sarajevo, where they met representatives of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency.

There they discussed <x0) ways to strengthen bilateral partnership and support stability in the Western Balkans”.

Through a post on the X platform, the US Embassy in Sarajevo underlined that the United States is committed to the Dayton Agreement for Peace and the territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In the message published by the Office of the International High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the occasion of the conventioners' visit, the importance of the American commitment to the Dayton Agreement was also stressed.

The two congressers met with the first top deputy representative, Louis Cristock, “to discuss the political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

For now, it is not clear whether the delegation of American congressers will visit Kosovo.

Free Europe Radio is awaiting response from the incumbent prime minister's Media Office, Albin Kurti.

Last week Kurt announced that he had a virtual meeting with a group of conventioners, including Self.

“Bilateral co-operation in defence between Kosovo and the United States is stronger than ever. This, largely because of the overwhelming two-party support Kosovo enjoys at the US Congress”, Kurti wrote in X, after that conversation.

In late April, Self, along with his colleagues, Ritchie Torres and Mike Lawler, proposed a resolution aimed at pushing Kosovo's path towards NATO.

The two-party resolution stresses, among other things, that Kosovo's <x0 democratic governance, civil oversight of security forces and multiethnic co-existence constitutes a convincing argument for NATO membership”. /Periscope