The President of the Republic of Kosovo, Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, received today the
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, Heiko Maas.
On behalf of the citizens of the country, President Osmani thanked Minister Maas for
the support that Germany has historically offered to Kosovo, to increase the number
of recognitions, to strengthen international subjectivity, to develop the economy and
to build a more lasting peace.
Afterwards, the two interlocutors held a press conference, in which they expressed
their views on the processes that Kosovo is going through, the confrontation with the
pandemic, the dialogue and the European perspective.
President Osmani said that the first issue and the basic priority of the institutions of
Kosovo is the pandemic management.
“I thanked the Minister for the assistance that Germany has given through the Covax
initiative and the European Union as well. So far, Kosovo has received 24,000
vaccines and another 95,000 are expected, but this is still a very small percentage
and I expressed the interest of the institutions of Kosovo to continue cooperation with
Germany to have support in the future as well”, said President Osmani.
Madam Osmani further added that the vaccines are necessary so that we can
manage this so dangerous pandemic.
As for the visa liberalization process, President Osmani emphasized that Kosovo has
already met the criteria.
“A process for which Kosovo has already met the criteria and I thank the Minister for
the support that the German institutions have given in this regard. Now we expect
from all the member states of the European Union to fulfill their promise in relation to
the people of Kosovo, who are still being unjustly kept isolated”, stressed Osmani.
President Osmani and Minister Maas also spoke about the dialogue process with
Serbia.
“The dialogue with Serbia is a process in which Kosovo has been engaged from the
beginning and our Republic has offered a hand of cooperation in relation to Serbia,
although unfortunately Serbia has not yet apologized for the crimes committed in
Kosovo and there is still no justice for the thousands and thousands of victims of
Kosovo. As institutions of Kosovo, I informed the Minister that we will continue to
raise our voice and to do our best to have justice for all these victims”, said President
Osmani.
According to the Head of State, the dialogue process needs a reset.
“We are in favor of the dialogue. But first we will do a ‘reset’ where we will take a
look at each agreement so far. Importantly, we will not embark on adventures
like those with border changes, being this a logic that belongs to a logic of the
past century. All our institutions will carefully review each agreement reached, each
document reviewed so far and we will develop a dialogue based on clear principles
where the Republic of Kosovo will in no way accept to enter into dangerous
adventures which have to do either with border changes, being this a logic that
belongs to the past century, or with the changes of the constitutional order of the
Republic of Kosovo which would endanger our internal functionality and a
dysfunctional Kosovo is not of need either for our region or our partners. Naturally,
we expect for this process to end with mutual recognition”, said the President.
At this conference, President Osmani and Minister Maas have opposed the idea of
redrawing the borders.
“We immediately got in touch with the Slovenian authorities, and they told us that
such a thing is not true. Such ideas are dangerous for the region and beyond, such
ideas belong to the nineteenth century and the drawing of borders on ethnic grounds
is contrary to European values”, stressed President Osmani. Whereas, Minister Maas
has said that such ideas are strongly rejected by Germany.
“I do not know if there are such attempts because all the time there has been talk of
non-paper what should remain as such. The German government strongly rejects
them because this solution would not lead to conflict resolution but would exacerbate
them, so we reject them. No one inside the EU would imagine that this could become
a reality”, declared the German Foreign Minister.