Kosovo's Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti looks on ahead of a meeting with the European Council President in Brussels on June 25, 2020.YVES HERMAN/AFP/Getty Images
A U.S.-mediated initiative to stabilize the Balkans, which the Trump administration hoped might burnish its foreign-policy credentials in an election year, was postponed Thursday after one of the main participants, President Hashim Thaci of Kosovo, was indicted on war crimes charges.
Mr. Thaci had been expected to meet Saturday at the White House with his Serbian counterpart, President Alexandar Vucic, at a summit mediated by Richard Grenell, an envoy for U.S. President Donald Trump. U.S. officials hoped the gathering might pave the way for long-standing tensions between the two Balkan countries to finally be settled.
Kosovo broke away from Serbia in 1999, aided by a NATO-led bombing campaign, but Serbia has never recognized Kosovo’s independence. Transport links between the two countries remain limited while economic ties are strained.
Mr. Grenell hoped Saturday’s summit might galvanize trade and business relationships between the two countries, providing momentum for more formal peace talks later in the year.
But Wednesday, the process was upended by prosecutors in the Netherlands, who announced that they had filed war crimes charges against Mr. Thaci for his alleged role in the killing and abuse of Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians while he was a guerrilla leader during the 1998-99 Kosovo War and its aftermath.
The charges have yet to be accepted by judges at the special court, which was founded by the Kosovo parliament in 2015 to try Kosovo people accused of war crimes and is based in the Netherlands to allow its international staff to operate more freely.
Mr. Thaci soon called off his visit to Washington, a move quickly followed by Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti. On Thursday, an adviser to the Serbian President said the meeting had been cancelled. Mr. Grenell confirmed on Twitter that the meeting would be rescheduled but did not specify a date.
More than 13,000 people were killed in the Kosovo War and its aftermath, according to figures compiled by the Humanitarian Law Center, an independent rights watchdog with offices in both Kosovo and Serbia.
Most of them were Kosovo Albanians killed by Serbian forces, often in mass killings for which few Serbs have been held accountable. But more than 2,000 Serbs, Kosovo Albanians and Roma were killed either by NATO bombs or by Kosovo guerrilla groups, such as the Kosovo Liberation Army, which Mr. Thaci helped lead. Mr. Thaci’s office declined to comment on the charges, which include murder, persecution and torture, but has historically denied similar claims. Another politician named in the indictment – Kadri Veseli, who leads a party founded by Mr. Thaci – issued a denial Wednesday.
The postponement of the summit caps an eventful few months for Mr. Grenell and his career in foreign policy.
Between February and May, he was Mr. Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, serving concurrently as U.S. ambassador to Germany, a role he gave up in May, and also as special presidential envoy for Serbian-Kosovo peace negotiations, a role he has kept.
During February and March, he became an increasingly divisive figure in Kosovo because he put severe pressure on Kosovo politicians while making few demands of Serbia, an ally of Russia.
Most controversially, he was perceived to have taken sides in a political dispute between Mr. Thaci and Albin Kurti, then the prime minister. After Mr. Grenell spoke out against Mr. Kurti, the latter was abandoned by his coalition partners, leading to the collapse of his government and causing a constitutional crisis in Kosovo.
In May, Mr. Grenell was criticized for politicizing the office of the director of national intelligence when he declassified documents related to Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
And this month, he drew bipartisan concern after leading the push to withdraw of thousands of U.S. troops from Germany, a move critics saw as detrimental to U.S. military planning.
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