In an article, the Blic daily talks about three reasons for the growing US pressure on Serbia.
The situation got especially complicated after the statements regarding the Serbia-Kosovo relations made by Matthew Palmer, the US State Department’s Special Envoy for the Western Balkans.
Concerns over the deployment and acquisition of Russian weapons, the EU’s poor moves, especially over its refusal to set a start date for accession talks with Albania and North Macedonia, and a clash between the State Department, represented by Matthew Palmer and the White House, represented by Richard Grenell, are three reasons for which the United States is exerting stronger pressure on Serbia, writes the Blic in its Monday edition.
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“Grenell is Palmer’s biggest problem. It’s almost a competition between the two, or rather between the administration – the State Department he represents, and the White House, that is, Grenell, who is Trump’s confidante,” a diplomatic source from Washington informs Blic.
He warns that the pressures on Serbia are about to increase, and we can see the change of course and the increased pressure in recent weeks, which coincided with Grenell’s appointment, followed by his first official visit to the region.
The Blic reports that its source has learned that Ambassador Grenell plans to invite President Aleksandar Vucic to sit in on the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s address in Berlin this week at a forum dedicated to peace and stability.
The newspaper notes that Americans find it concerning that Serbia plans to acquire the powerful S-300 or S-400 missile systems from Russia, and recalls that Palmer, among other things, noted that “the US is concerned about the presence of Russian military equipment in Serbia”.
His unusually harsh statements, or rather threats, surprised a part of the Serbian public, but only those who have little knowledge of internal relations in the US administration, that is, the problems between the State Department and the White House, the paper concludes.
(B92, 04.11,2019)
https://www.vesti-online.com/blic-tri-razloga-zbog-kojih-amerika-pritiska-srbiju/
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