By Assem Rawashda, KUNA
Sarajevo : Serbia has officially announced its boycott of the NATO summit set to be held next month in the Romanian capital, Bucharest, making it the only European country absent in a move that protests the recognition of Kosovo’s independence by major western members of the organization.
A statement by the Serb Defense Ministry said Friday that Minister Dragan Sultanovac would be on an official visit to the Algerian Desert when the summit convened, adding that agreements would be signed for maintaining Serb tanks sold to the North African country by Yugoslavia some 16 years back.
Speaking to KUNA, political analyst at the Zagreb-based Institute for International Relations, Andreja Fedlman, said Belgrade’s stance was not only a protest, but also reflected its adamant position against NATO’s foreign policies, while getting cozier with Russia.
This, she said, pointed at the imminence of the birth of a new eastern camp, an heir to the Warsaw Pact that dissolved with the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the 1980s.
She said the establishment of a new alliance that countered NATO expansion was quite possible in light of common Russian and Serb interests and their increasing opposition to the NATO.
The analyst noted that there were several social, ethnic and religious aspects that helped bring Russia and Serbia closer together, adding that this would no doubt plunge the region into yet another period of instability in which large powers competed for hegemony over that part of the world.
Fedlman added that Belgrade had taken a road from which there was no return in its anti-western policies, especially after announcing that it would allow Russia to have military bases on its territories, which also indicated that this alliance would not be undone in the near future.