Ambassadors from the quintet, made up of the United States, Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy, boycotted a reception organized Monday evening in Pristina to mark Kosovo’s “Liberation Day.”
Only the ambassadors of Switzerland and Saudi Arabia attended, according to media reports cited by Italian news agency ANSA.
Liberation Day is commemorated on June 12, 1999, when nearly 40,000 strong KFOR troops entered Kosovo, 78 days after the NATO bombing of Serbia and the end of the war. Three days earlier, a peace accord was signed in Kumanovo, northern Macedonia, whereby Serbia’s strongman, Slobodan Milosevic, withdrew his forces from Kosovo.
Opposition representatives also did not attend the reception hosted by Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani and Prime Minister Albin Kurdi.
The reason for the Western boycott was exasperation with the Pristina leadership’s policy in the northern Kosovo crisis, which ignored the Quintet’s repeated calls for a rapid de-escalation of inter-ethnic tensions and the creation of a community of Kosovo Serb municipalities.
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