Kosovo PM Meets Top Bosnian Officials Despite No Official Ties
Mohammad Ali (@ChaudhryMAli88) Published December 07, 2024 | 12:10 AM
Sarajevo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 7th Dec, 2024) Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti met with leading Bosnian officials in Sarajevo on Friday during his first visit to the Balkan nation, despite the lack of diplomatic relations between the countries.
Kurti's visit, which was panned by Bosnia's Serb leaders, came amid Kosovo's simmering tensions with neighbouring Serbia.
Bosnia's Serb statelet, Republika Srpska (RS), has long been a barrier to the country's formal recognition of Kosovo's independence from Serbia in 2008.
Ahead of a speech at a conference in Sarajevo, Kurti met the Croat and Bosniak Muslim members of the country's tripartite presidency, Zeljko Komsic and Denis Becirovic.
Both Komsic and Becirovic condemned the criticism of the visit.
"We will not allow anyone to even think that they can discipline the leaders of Bosnia-Hercegovina and determine with whom, where and when they can talk," Becirovic said in a statement.
Following the meeting, Kurti said in a post on social media that the two sides had discussed "trade and cultural exchanges, as well as strengthening regional cooperation".
Kurti also highlighted his government's decision to allow Bosnians to travel to Kosovo without visas.
Zeljka Cvijanovic, the Serb chairman of the presidency, later criticised the meeting, saying a "private visit should not take place in official institutions", according to public broadcaster BHRT.
Kurti's visit came just days after he blamed neighbouring Serbia for an explosion targeting a strategic canal in Kosovo, calling the blast a "terrorist attack" masterminded by Belgrade.
He condemned what he called the "expansionist, hegemonic mentality of our northern neighbour", referring to Serbia.
"Still, I am optimistic in the sense that today there is no longer mass nationalism as fuel for the war machine of the dictatorship", Kurti said in his speech on a panel organized by the Association of Independent Intellectuals in Sarajevo.
Serbia has rejected accusations of responsibility for the Kosovo canal explosion.
Since the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, the country has consisted of two semi-independent entities -- a Muslim-Croat federation and the Serbs' RS.
The two share weak central institutions, including the presidency.
Animosity between Serbia and Kosovo, which has an ethnic Albanian majority, has persisted since the end of a war in the late 1990s between Belgrade's forces and ethnic Albanian separatists in what was then a province of Serbia.
Serbia has never recognised Kosovo's 2008 declaration of independence.
