For President Aleksandar Vučić and the pro-government media, the latest events in Kosovo are a victory. They claim that for the first time Serbia has received written guarantees that the Kosovo Security Forces cannot go north without the official approval of KFOR. A part of the Serbs from the north is still disappointed that these security guarantees do not also apply to the Kosovo police and that the bases of the Kosovo police in the north remain.
The people at the barricades asked the president why they should withdraw, if the Kosovo police, including the special forces that harassed the population in the previous weeks, remains in the North.
“My opinion, and the opinion of my police officers, is that if we remove these barricades, they will chase us like rabbits,” said former member of the Kosovo police, Aleksandar Filipović.
The president’s response, however, was very sharp.
“Have you people read the papers??? Tell me one bad thing? Show me. Here are the papers in Serbian? Show me one of our obligations, one bad thing for us? Plus the one around Pantić. Another thing is what we have accumulated. Well, it accumulated for all of us. It was not you, but me, who attended 224 negotiations. Do you think that one meeting was nice for me?” said Vučić.
He further explained to them via Instagram that the most important goal had been achieved.
“Today, we received for the first time something that becomes a new source of law for us, which does not only apply to those two parties, but which clearly prescribes the obligations of KFOR to do without their consent, but also without the local Serbian community, and ultimately even without Serbia, there cannot be the presence of Kosovo security forces,” said Vučić.
But those guarantees refer to the security forces, which are military units, since Kosovo has no right to maintain those forces as an army. For Marko Milenković from the New Social Initiative from Kosovska Mitrovica, the key lies in the police.
“When the barricades were set up, the reason was the arrest of Pantić, but the cause was first of all the behavior of the special Kosovo police, which has been present in increasing numbers in the north of Kosovo in the last few months, where bases have also been built. At the moment, the local population has the impression that not all, nor most of the demands have been fulfilled. “If the barricades were removed only after some initial reaction from the international community or the authorities in Pristina”, Milenković assesses.
The reason for such disappointment of residents in the north of Kosovo is the series that began with the signing of the Brussels Agreement in April 2013. Since then, Belgrade has been losing its authority in Kosovo step by step.
The government of Aleksandar Vučić agreed in order – to the integration of the police, the withdrawal of the Serbian judiciary, gave Kosovo an international calling number, Kosovo entered the International Olympic Committee, FIFA and UEFA, and Serbia agreed to the integration of the electric power system in the north into the Kosovo system.
According to opposition MP and former diplomat Vladeta Janković, the last in a series of rash and wrong moves was the abandonment of even that integrated police, which left the population completely without protection.
“What did we do? We have freed up space. The Albanian police entered that area. Albanian police arrested Pantić and other people. That’s why we raised barricades. And the situation kept escalating and we did what suited Kurti. And step by step we got to the point where Hill said it was high time they were removed. Here you see, they have been removed. And where are we now? Now we are two steps lower, because we are not in the institutions, our police left the stations, returned the equipment. Where were you nowhere, what were you doing – nothing.
And the people in black are in charge of implementing the agreement between the president and the Serbs from the north of Kosovo. First of all, Milan Radoičić, who after the meeting in Raška was warmly greeted by the Chief of the General Staff, Milan Mojsilović, N1 reports.
