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BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – A U. S. delegation pledged Tuesday to move forward to bring business and investment between Serbia and Kosovo to life after former enemies of the war agreed at the White House this month to paint paintings to normalize economic relations.
The United States visited Belgrade on Monday, the capital of Serbia, after visiting Kosovo, a sign of America’s growing interest in the tense Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Tuesday.
“What we’ve done in Washington looks wonderful and wonderful,” said Richard Grenell, special envoy to US President Donald Trump for the Serbia-Kosovo talks, at a news convention held at the U. S. Ambassador to Belgrade. “We’re not done. ” This symbolism is important, but it is about creating tasks ».
Serbia and the former province of Kosovo are in a decades-long territorial confrontation that broke out in a war in 1998-99. Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, but Belgrade does not recognize division. The factor remains a source of tension in the country. Balkans, a volatile domain with ambitions to join the European Union and where Russia and China also fight for their influence.
Washington has recently intensified its efforts to help unlock the dispute by focusing on economic progress. Both sides agreed on economic ties as part of an agreement with Trump, an action that some analysts saw as an attempt to demonstrate the good luck of foreign policy. U. S. presidential election in November.
“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for President Trump, who has the idea that anything else can happen,” Grenell said.
It said that the composition of the United States delegation, which included officials from the Departments of Energy and Trade, USAID, the U. S. Financial Corporation for International Development and the U. S. Export and Import Bank, that Kosovo and Serbia “have the full attention of the United States”. Government of States. “
“We need the other Serbs to hold us accountable that words on paper are not enough until there is a great creation of tasks, economic development, hope and families who remain in this region and form their families in the next generation. “
The United States conducted a NATO intervention in 1999 that ended Serbia’s crackdown on Kosovo’s Albanian separatists and forced Belgrade to withdraw from the territory. Relations between Washington and Belgrade have been due for years to the bombing and recognition through the United States of Kosovo’s independence.
Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic agreed at the White House to normalize economic relations, that Serbia would move its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem and have mutual popularity with Israel.
“I think we’ve opened the door to an old friendship with America,” Vucic said Tuesday at a press convention with visiting U. S. officials. “It’s a day for Serbia. “
U. S. and Serbian officials also inaugurated the opening of a regional in Belgrade of the International Finance Corporation for Development. CHIEF Adam Boehler said projects worth “billions of dollars” were being evaluated.
“Today’s opening is not symbolic. It is one that will stand, which will be permanent,” Boehler said, praising a “new era of U. S. -Serbia relations. “
Most Western countries have identified Kosovo’s independence, but Serbia and its allies, Russia and China, have not. The European Union has held political discussions aimed at normalizing between the two rivals.