The leaders of Serbia and Macedonia agreed to promote dialogue between the two neighbours and to “jointly strive” to improve relations, after Belgrade abruptly recalled all staff from its embassy in Skopje.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev made the announcement in a five-point joint statement following a telephone conversation.
Earlier this week, Serbian Embassy staff were withdrawn for consultations regarding what Vucic called “offensive intelligence activities” against Serbia — something Macedonian officials denied.
The move coincided with reports that Macedonia was joining diplomatic efforts to secure Kosovo’s membership in the UN cultural agency UNESCO.
Serbia has not recognized Kosovo’s independence and opposes its attempts to join international organizations.
Kosovo, which declared independence in 2008, applied to join UNESCO in 2015, but its application did not secure enough votes.
To remind, Minareport has claimed that the US Ambassador to Macedonia Jess Baily has been directly involved in the wiretapping affair targeting Serbian diplomats and officials.
The Macedonian website referred to Baily as a CIA officer “whose cover is ‘US ambassador to Macedonia’.”
The Belgrade daily Politika cites the report, which states that Baily “asked local vassal (Macedonian PM) Zoran Zaev to employ the Macedonian counter intel agency DBK in wiretapping Serbian diplomats, including the president Aleksandar Vucic.”
“CIA’s Jess Baily is using an identical scenario used to topple VMRO-DPMNE, except now the target is Serbia. To the CIA, the fall of Macedonia is not enough. Serbia must fall as well to complete the US ownership of the Balkans,” Minareport said.
“At the moment, the US and t the US Deep State and its vassals the Brits and Germans have given the green light to turn Skopje into a HQ for the upcoming work to destabilize Serbia,” the report continued, and noted that Baily was in the past “kicked out from Turkey for the first failed coup against Erdogan.”
(Radio Free Europe, B92, 23.08.2017)
https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-macedonia-agree-to-mend-ties-diplomatic-spat/28692929.html
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2017&mm=08&dd=24&nav_id=102147
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