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The real question is not whether the status of Kosovo and Metohija should be negotiated; the actual questions to be asked are: On which basis? About what? Whom with?
The sole legitimate basis is that Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia currently placed under UN mandate, pending a Security Council decision ending it. In other words, this is mandate cannot be terminated either by the EU, or NATO, the USA, Germany, or France and, should this idea ever occurred to anyone, Serbia cannot end it, either.
International law (the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act) and the Constitution of Serbia are the only starting points carrying any prospect of successful negotiating, and not any trade law.
Since UNSC Resolution 1244 is a fundamental, global compromise, and since it has not been fully implemented, the basic logic begs that the subject of negotiation be the full application and concretization of this legally and generally binding comprehensive document without any recourse to its evasion, selection, negation, or revision.
The single guarantor of a possible agreement on future status can only be the UN Security Council.
The Brussels Agreement is Baroness Ashton’s unconstitutional dictate and could hardly be construed as anything else. While it stopped short of changing the status of Kosovo and Metohija, it did substantially alter the reality in the north of this Province, where it effected the removal of the constitutional and legal order of the Republic of Serbia and, by virtue of a signature on behalf of Serbia, the establishment of an unlawful separatist and terrorist order.
Regardless of a culprit, any previous errors made to the detriment of Serbia and the Serbian people ought to be remedied by not making fresh ones and by not justifying oneself by wrongdoings of predecessors.
Reciprocity is not a proper term for the relation of Serbia as an entirety vis-à-vis Kosovo and Metohija as her part.
The struggle for the upholding of the constitutional order, and for the observance of international law and resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council cannot be put on equal terms with the ambition to legitimize separatism, terrorism, and aggression.
It was a huge mistake to accept the terms for the meeting in Washington DC and yet another one-sided concession.
Serbia is fighting for her sovereignty and territorial integrity which therefore also include the interests of Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija as a people, and not as merely members of a national minority.
Unprincipled positions championed by Ms. Merkel and Presidents Macron and Trump are but an exhibition of the policy of force and their narrow-minded geopolitics, and cannot be taken as an obligation for Serbia, the UN Security Council and the global community.
It is only the principled approach to the resolving of the status of Kosovo and Metohija which is capable of contributing to peace in the Balkans and in Europe. Otherwise, arbitrariness and trampling on rights and UN Security Council Resolution 1244 is steps closer in the direction of general confrontation and new clashes.
The leaders of aggressor countries, exponents of policy of domination and conflict, and outgoing leaders cannot be the guarantors of Serbian interests. This role is exclusively reserved for the United Nations Security Council.
Originally published on 2020-06-18
Author: Živadin Jovanović
Source: The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals
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