Skopje, 17 April 2024 (MIA) – Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani said Wednesday he had facts and information in relation to the events in Kosovo’s Banjska that had taken place on 24 September 2023, which he would present at a government’s closed session in order “the country to re-examine whether it should stay in the Open Balkan initiative together with Albania and Serbia.”

After the Banjska incident, he didn’t take part in an Open Balkan event, however he said it is the government that should decide whether North Macedonia would continue to be part of the “noble” initiative.

“When the Banjska attack happened, I’d stated that it was against the main idea of the initiative, which is reconciliation. I said – if Belgrade had had direct involvement, then it should be re-examined, because it undermines the pillars of the main idea. Because now I have more information as what had happened in Banjska, I plan to inform the government about this at a closed session and then the government will decide what to do next,” Osmani told a journalist after a news conference regarding North Macedonia’s co-sponsorship of a UN resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica. 

According to him, the Open Balkan initiative is incomplete because not all six Western Balkan countries are in it.

Being an idea of the Albanian PM Edi Rama, said Osmani, it had two objectives – reconciliation as a precondition to close the Kosovo-Serbia dispute and mutual recognition and market liberalization. “These are noble objectives, but the initiative will remain incomplete until it includes all six Western Balkan countries.”

Photo: MIA archive