Former CIA chief: North Kosovo should go to Serbia, UN should take care of resettling from south

Steven Meyer, a former deputy head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the Balkans and an excellent connoisseur of the region, once again addressed the Serbian public with his view of solving the Kosovo problem, as well as other crisis spots in the region.

In an interview with Belgrade weekly NIN, Mayer, who has 23 years CIA experience where he also served as deputy chief of the Balkan Task Force during the Bosnian war, believes that both Serbia and Kosovo must make concessions without the meddling of great powers.

"The Brussels agreement is dead and if Belgrade and Pristina want to make progress, they must clearly tell great powers not to interfere," he said, adding that Kosovo is already "a frozen conflict" in some way.

According to him, the solution is to partition the territory of Kosovo, whose northern part should go to Serbia.

"I think the area north of the Ibar River must belong to Serbia in the final agreement. And I think it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for Serbia to reclaim the rest of Kosovo and Metohija," Meyer told NIN.

Photo: Milena Djordjevic

He believes that the United Nations should be in charge of resettling Serbs from Serb communities south of the Ibar - if they don't want to live under Kosovo's rule - and of protecting the (Serbian Orthodox) holy sites.

Meyer also believes that "if the issue of the area north of the Ibar is raised, the Presevo valley must also be a topic, and in some distant future, perhaps the Serb Republic, too."

Meyer believes that if Pristina and Belgrade agree, it will eventually satisfy the European Union, and if Washington respects the decision, then Moscow will do the same, and vice versa.

However, he stresses that America will not like an agreement on a border change because Washington is saying that would lead to war. Meyer also pointed out that Washington has been pulling the strings in Kosovo for two decades now.

"The way to respond to potential opposition (to changing borders) is this: You see, your way did not work. We have been pulling the rope since 1999 and there is no solution yet," he told NIN, adding that it's possible to change borders without war.

Regarding the role of the European Union in the Kosovo problem, he said that EU leadership is fatigued and not as powerful as it used to be.

In his recent a recent interview with Telegraf.rs, Meyer's message to Belgrade was to give a part of Kosovo and Presevo, and to seek the Serb Republic (Serb entity in Bosnia) and half of Macedonia in return:

(Telegraf.rs)