On kosovo, Serbia stands between a rock and a hard place

On the one side, Serbia is negotiating with the Kosovo Albanians unwilling to budge given the full support they enjoy from Washington, Berlin and a large part of the member states of the European Union.
If they go for the deal, the Belgrade authorities could be relieved from EU pressure aimed at dismantling the institutions of Serbia in Serb-populated areas of Kosovo and would get a date for the beginning of talks on EU membership.
But, Belgrade has been, is and will continue to be under intense pressure from the key Western capitals to move towards formally recognizing the unilateral secession of its southern province.
Since the Serbian position is that Belgrade will never recognize Kosovo's secession, its EU prospects will thus sooner or later hit the wall.
The never-ending European economic crisis, the doubts cast on the future of EU enlargements and the rising euroskepticism in Serbia -- with a historical low for the support for EU membership - are not going to make it easy for the Serbian government to choose the EU over Kosovo in the foreseeable future.

But this is not the hardest part. Inside Serbia, the support for the deals with Pristina is low, while the Kosovo Serbs, in particular in the north, are outright hostile to a deal that would spell the end of the institutions of the state of Serbia in Kosovo.
"We have taken two key decisions", Marko Jaksic, one of the key Serb leaders in northern Kosovo told EU Reporter following an urgent meeting Friday of the councilors from the four Serb-populated municipalities in northern Kosovo.
"First of all, we reject the proposed agreement and we urge the authorities not to sign it", he said, pointing out that the councilors have declared that "no one has the authority to sign an act which establishes the rule of the unrecognized so-called "Republic of Kosovo" on the part of the territory of the Republic of Serbia".
"Second, we have decided to start a petition for 100.000 signatures needed to call for a referendum on ‘EU or Kosovo'. We do not want to be held hostages. We want the people to clearly say that this territory where we live remains to be part of Serbia", Jaksic said.
The Serbs in the north might be just 70,000, but without their cooperation no deal struck in Brussels could be implemented. For the last 14 years, since the end of the Kosovo war, they have not been unfamiliar with boycotts, roadblocks and other forms of disobedience against what they consider as an Albanian attempt to take over the north and expel them from their homes.
More than 200,000 Serbs have been expelled from their homes in Kosovo and some 120,000 who remain live either in the north, which is geographically connected to central Serbia, or in small enclaves in the south, surrounded by the ethnic Albanian majority.
Those who have remained in the enclaves face restricted freedom of movement, discrimination, threats and harassment - a fate which the Serbs in the north fear could repeat itself in case Pristina takes control.

 WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE DEAL
Essentially, under the deal, the Serb local authorities in the north would be gathered under an autonomous umbrella of a "Community of Serbian municipalities", an entity with its own police command, judicial, health, education and urban planning system.
But - and here is the catch - these institutions are meant to replace the institutions of the state of Serbia, which would cease to function in the Serb-populated areas of Kosovo.
As such, the new institutions would be linked - at least formally - to the authorities in Pristina, run by the Kosovo Albanians.
Belgrade is trying to reassure the Kosovo Serbs by saying that it will adopt a constitutional law which would link the deal to the Constitution of Serbia and thus make sure that it does not mean giving up on the province.
A guarantee that does not go far with the local Serbs. A guarantee that will be rejected by the Kosovo Albanians. And a guarantee which is likely to be ignored by the Western sponsors of Kosovo's secession.
Which means no guarantee for either the EU prospects of the region nor for stability on the ground