President Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia has accused Kosovo of dragging the dialogue along, while affirming his country’s readiness for “difficult solutions”.
“Unlike them, I can’t play the blame game. Something has to change in the society in Pristina, to understand that only a compromise solution is a solution, and that it won’t happen that someone takes a hammer and hits me in the head or Serbia, so that Serbia will be forced to recognize independence,” Vucic said on Saturday from Pranjani, Serbia.
He stated that unlike Kosovo, Serbia is ready for “difficult solutions”.
“We are ready for talks and difficult solutions, because there are no easy ones,” he emphasized.
Vucic and Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci have previously pushed for land swaps between Kosovo and Serbia, supported by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama. They suspended actively lobbying for the idea after Germany and France’s refusal to support the plan, which faced fierce opposition in Kosovo.
On Friday, EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak announced that they had postponed Monday Brussels talks by one week due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In his speech on Saturday, Vucic also praised Kosovo Serbs for putting a banner reading “Lake Trump” on Kosovo’s Ujman Lake bridge, suggesting that it was them proposing the name change.
“Our people in Kosovo love Trump. How can anyone not understand that, they experienced the worst hardships during the previous administrations. From what I’ve seen, people made it themselves. What do you think, should we kneel before those who bombed our country? We won’t do that, and I’m not ashamed to say it,” Vucic stated.
Renaming the lake after President Trump was reportedly a joke by his envoy Richard Grenell during the drafting of the “economic normalisation” pledges in the White House in early September. Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti later supported the idea after a “Lake Trump” banner appeared near the lake.
