The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.
Serbia Disputes Kosovo-Macedonia Border
| 24 April 2008 |
Skopje _ Opposition from Serbia – backed by Russia - to the recent start of the demarcation of the Macedonia-Kosovo border could turn the technical question into an international dispute, local experts say.
“This is a political move that may cause additional unnecessary tensions in the region,” the former Macedonian foreign minister and political analyst, Slobodan Casule, told the Macedonian daily Dnevnik on Thursday.
Speaking to the same newspaper, the former prime minister, Vlado Buckovski, said that the irritating part of the affair was that “the borderline is now being disputed by the same side that we [earlier] agreed [about it] with”.
Macedonia signed a United Nations-verified agreement on Kosovo’s border demarcation in 2001, when Kosovo was universally recognised as a province of Serbia.
On Monday, at a session of the UN Security Council dedicated to Kosovo, the Russian envoy to the UN, Vitalij Curkin, expressed strong disagreement with the start of the border demarcation.
Earlier this month, the joint Macedonia-Kosovo committees assembled to resume the stalled process. The border had been left unmarked after Pristina authorities disputed Serbia’s right to arrange Kosovo’s borders. Read more at http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/9058
Casule argued that the joint moves by Belgrade and Moscow have no legal grounds, since the earlier agreement was signed with a state “whose legal successors are both Kosovo and Serbia”.
Defining the mutual border formed part of the UN plan for Kosovo devised by the special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, in 2007. Skopje has strongly backed the plan and insisted on its full implementation.
“This is a political move that may cause additional unnecessary tensions in the region,” the former Macedonian foreign minister and political analyst, Slobodan Casule, told the Macedonian daily Dnevnik on Thursday.
Speaking to the same newspaper, the former prime minister, Vlado Buckovski, said that the irritating part of the affair was that “the borderline is now being disputed by the same side that we [earlier] agreed [about it] with”.
Macedonia signed a United Nations-verified agreement on Kosovo’s border demarcation in 2001, when Kosovo was universally recognised as a province of Serbia.
On Monday, at a session of the UN Security Council dedicated to Kosovo, the Russian envoy to the UN, Vitalij Curkin, expressed strong disagreement with the start of the border demarcation.
Earlier this month, the joint Macedonia-Kosovo committees assembled to resume the stalled process. The border had been left unmarked after Pristina authorities disputed Serbia’s right to arrange Kosovo’s borders. Read more at http://balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/9058
Casule argued that the joint moves by Belgrade and Moscow have no legal grounds, since the earlier agreement was signed with a state “whose legal successors are both Kosovo and Serbia”.
Defining the mutual border formed part of the UN plan for Kosovo devised by the special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, in 2007. Skopje has strongly backed the plan and insisted on its full implementation.
