When Donald Trump appointed Richard Grenell as his special envoy for missions last December, he announced that his envoy would work on some of the world's hottest spots, including Venezuela and North Korea, recalls journalist Michael Martens in an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He adds: "In Trump's special envoy's interpretation, Kosovo is obviously one of those hot spots, because Grenell directly interfered in the election campaign in Kosovo ahead of the parliamentary elections on February 9."
The author recalls Grenell's February 3 announcement on the X platform, in which he announced that the Trump administration would engage in the Balkans. He also points to the assessment that Washington must have reliable partners, and that the government of Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and his Self-Determination party, according to Grenell, is not such a partner.
"The Kurti government was not reliable during Trump's first term, nor during Biden's term," Grenell said, as reported by the Frankfurt newspaper.
The author recalls that back in January, Grenell accused Kurti of bringing Kosovo-US relations to a "low point", that Kurti had always opposed every American idea, even when Trump's predecessors Obama, Bush and Clinton were in power, that is, since the Kosovo war in 1999. Ahead of Sunday's elections, Grenell told Kosovo Albanians: "Don't be fooled," reports the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Sensitive to American messages
Grenell's message is addressed to the audience in Kosovo, the author assesses, explaining that this audience is more sensitive to American messages than the public in most other countries: "The basic mood in Kosovo has been pro-American since before the country's liberation from Serbian rule in 1999. For obvious reasons: without American leadership, NATO would not have bombed Serbia at that time. Without Washington, Serbian troops consisting of the army, police and paramilitary units would not have been forced to withdraw in June 1999 from the territory that Serbia conquered from the Ottomans in 1912 and occupied. And without the US, there would have been no declaration of independence of Kosovo in 2008. More than a hundred countries, including the vast majority of democracies, would not have recognized independence. Israel is the last country to recognize Kosovo - after Trump's intervention," the Frankfurt newspaper reminds.
Given the US role in Kosovo, it is certainly to be expected that Grenell's warning about Kurti will be widely discussed in Kosovo, the author believes. "It remains to be seen whether it will have the impact that Grenell hopes for. He explicitly declared himself against Kurti before the previous Kosovo parliamentary elections in February 2021, but Kurti's Samovedenostje party won then with a record result of more than fifty percent of the vote. Its goal is to surpass that triumph again."
Open resistance to Washington
Polls show that Kurti's party could once again be the strongest, the article states, but adds that an absolute majority is uncertain: "If he is forced to form a coalition or if the opposition takes power, Grenell would achieve his goal: Kurti would be in opposition or at least in a coalition. Kurti's first government, formed in February 2020, collapsed after just two months, partly because Grenell exerted enormous pressure on Kurti's coalition partners to leave the coalition, which is what happened."
It is also recalled that during Trump's first term, Grenell was not only the US ambassador to Berlin, but also a special envoy for "peace negotiations" between Kosovo and Serbia: "In an accelerated process, Grenell wanted to prepare a 'historic agreement' between Belgrade and Pristina, which would allow his boss to look like the great creator of a historic agreement. Kurti, however, rejected Grenell's ideas, which were perceived, not only in Pristina, as incoherent, superficial and clumsy."
Open resistance to Washington - no prime minister in Pristina had dared to do that before, the author of the article assesses and concludes: "Now, five years later, the situation is similar. Grenell wants an obedient head of government in Kosovo. Kurti has never been one. On Sunday, the voters in Kosovo will have the final say."
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