Belgrade 04/25/2023

                                                             PUBLIC STATEMENT

                 Thwarting the usurpation and annulment
of the Brussels Agreement by its opponents is paramount

Forum for Security and Democracy (FSD/FBD) is following the current events surrounding the recently held local elections in North Kosovo – as well as the statements of government officials and high diplomatic representatives immediately after the election results were announced - with great concern.
FSD is also cautiously awaiting further developments at the scheduled meeting between the representatives of Belgrade and Pristina in Brussels.

FSD views the current political developments as the greatest test of the negotiation process between Belgrade and Pristina – which has recently marked its 10th anniversary – to date.
FSD at the same time emphatically fears that further escalation of such a current state could cause tectonic political upheavals of great proportions which would not just jeopardize Serbia‘s Euro-Atlantic integrations but could also lead to the country‘s political (self)isolation from which there is no clear exit strategy.

FSD for this reason expects that all the signatory parties of the Brussels agreement – as well as the participants in the agreement that was reached in Ohrid – use all of their political skills and capacities to oppose the further deterioration of the current political dynamic of the negotiation process between Belgrade and Pristina and stop the process itself from going on a path that could lead to it‘s discontinuation or breakdown as well as the usurpation and annulment of the achieved and planned results of the Brussels agreement by political forces that opposed the process itself since it was signed into being.

FSD, last but not least, with regards to the defence of the Brussels agreement, which was further strengthened in Ohrid, has significant expectations of the European Union, as it‘s warrantor, and just as significant, if not even greater, expectations from the American administration and it‘s diplomatic representatives and emissaries in the Western Balkans as it is our opinion that the newly developed situation can best be overcome through an increased involvement of the United States and their stronger advocacy for the maintaining of the achieved agreements in Belgrade as well as Pristina.