Serbian President, Aleksandar Vucic has offered, through lobbyist Richard Grenell, to help with the political downfall of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Presidency member, Milorad Dodik.
Podgorica newspaper Vijesti wrote that Grenell met with a group of Republican congressmen at the Trump Hotel in Washington on December 1st and that the meeting was also attended by Serbian Ambassador to the United States (U.S.), Marko Djuric, a longtime close associate of Vucic.
According to the media, Grenell, who was the special envoy of former U.S. President Donald Trump for Kosovo and the Belgrade-Pristina negotiations, presented Dodik as a major disruptive factor in the Balkans, and Vucic as a partner and stabilizer of the situation.
Claudia Tenney, Mike Turner, and Nicole Malliotakis were among the congressmen who attended the meeting. Neither they nor Grenell answered questions from reporters about thatmeeting.
Grenell mentioned at the meeting that Vucic would be ready to help withdraw or remove Dodik in political terms and that he offered Zeljka Cvijanovic as an alternative. In return, Vucic hopes he could improve his tarnished image, especially ahead of the spring elections.
A group of U.S. congressmen from the Democratic Party recently sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, in which they harshly criticized the President of Serbia for allegations of corruption and brutal pressure on the media, and even demanded consideration of sanctions.
The media in Serbia have previously written about the connections between Grenell and Vucic, and the claim of Dusan Janjic from the Forum for Ethnic Relations that Serbia is paying dearly for Grenell’s services was also shared, which was unconvincingly denied by the Serbian Government. There were reports in the media that Grenell was having dinner with Vucic and Ana Brnabic, and a photo with Sinisa Mali from the Lafayette nightclub in Belgrade was also shared.
Despite the fact that the Democrats have a majority, the influence of the Republican Party is still huge, and they hope that in 2022 they will be able to win a majority in both houses of parliament, so the source noted that it is not unusual that Vucicstill “holds” Grenell as a lobbyist. Cvijanovic traveled to the U.S. in November and had meetings with people from Congress and the U.S. administration, but there was no official information on the topics of the meeting.
Also, it was written in the news that Vucic complained about Dodik to the European Union (EU) envoy for the Balkans, Miroslav Lajcak, during the last meeting in Belgrade.
E.Dz.
Source: Klix.ba
