September 07, 2020
by Zoran Petrov for The Saker Blog
UPDATE!
Although I tried to predict possible outcomes from White House meeting, the results were more then a surprise! What is obvious from 2 (or 3 days) summit is that stakes of the actual three party meeting were different from those involving Belgrade-Pristina.
Thanks to coming presidential elections in US, Serbia managed to get some concessions that were impossible before (see images from proposed document as well documents signed by Albanians). But there was a price to pay for!
Vucic had rough ride in America mainly because he managed successfully to blackmail US counterparts.
From what is public information, we know that “mutual recognition” was off the proposed agreement. Despite “heroic” battles it is now clear, that “mutual recognition” was just a smoke screen that poor Pristina took it for real! The whole event was for Trump and it served his election campaign. Question of recognition of Jerusalem by the first EU country (Serbia) is important achievement for his evangelist and Jewish voters. Maybe this summit was ignored by major media but it was followed by religious TV and radio shows. The same is for Hezbollah issue.
Vucic paid humiliating price for taking advantage of situation (now famous sitting in the small chair in front of Trump) and blackmailing for changes in an agreement by stopping short of excluding Russia as supplier of gas and China from supplying 5G equipment to Serbia!
Another small revenge was change in text in regard to Jerusalem, by US side that caught Vucic by surprise when Trump announced it on press conference.
What we don´t know is what was real discussion between two delegations, especially between Vucic and Pompeo? What we know for sure, thanks to Vucic lapsus, that there were discussion about who will control sky above Kosovo. After NATO occupation of Kosovo, NATO controlled airspace above Kosovo. That space is divided in upper layer (above 8700 meters) and lower one (up to 8700 meters). In 2014 NATO transferred the authority to control the upper layer to the Hungarian Flight Control. It seems that Serbia was trying to get that control from NATO but obviously talks are not concluded yet. It is of paramount importance to mention that Serbia will, based on this agreement get rail access to deep water port in Albania (Durres -Serbia unsuccessfully tried to purchase port in Bar, Montenegro some years ago). It seems that interesting times are coming!
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