US Politicians Urge White House to Ease Pressure on Kosovo

Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Relations and Bob Menendez, a ranking member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, send a joint letter to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday that the Trump administration should ease its pressure on Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti and his outgoing administration.

Since he came to office on February 3, Kurti has been under constant pressure from the US envoy on Kosovo-Serbia dialogue, Richard Grenell, to lift tariffs on imports of Serbia goods that were imposed last year.

"The U.S. has taken a heavy-handed approach toward the elected government in Kosovo. While we agree that Kosovo's tariffs on Serbian goods - which have now been lifted - mainly hurt Kosovo and its citizens, this tool has been used by governments around the world, frequently including the Trump Administration," Engel and Menendez said in the letter.

"Kosovo is a close ally of the United States, and we urge you to adopt a patient and constructive approach with its democratically-elected government," they wrote.

They warned that the White House has been taking an unbalanced approach to the Kosovo-Serbia situation, unfairly penalising the Kurti government while failing to pressurise Serbia to end its campaign to get states worldwide to derecognise Kosovo, or to check the Belgrade government's deepening relations with Russia. 

Kurti's government fell in a no-confidence vote that was called after he dismissed Interior Minister Agim Veliu, a member of his governing coalition partner party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, on March 18 amid infighting over how to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

But the backstory to the government's fall is the divergence between the EU and the US over...