Despite Armenia’s continuing reluctance to recognize his country’s independence, President Hashim Thaci of Kosovo was received by his Armenian counterpart Armen Sarkissian on Friday on the sidelines of a summit of the Francophonie organization held in Yerevan.
Thaci was among the leaders of over three dozen French-speaking nations who arrived in the Armenian capital to take part in the two-day summit. It was his first-ever visit to Armenia.
Thaci shook hands with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian at the start of the summit on Thursday. He described his ensuing meeting with Sarkissian as “good.”
“I expressed our desire to increase our interaction within multilateral, cultural, economic spheres of influence,” he wrote on his Twitter page.
A separate statement by Thaci’s office said he and the Armenian president “agreed to continue mutual communication in the future.”
Sarkissian’s press service said the two men spoke about “challenges facing the humanity and possibilities of overcoming them.” It referred to Thaci as “the leader of a country that has received the status of an associated member in the International Organization of the Francophonie.”
Serbia lost control over Kosovo in 1999 after a NATO bombing campaign to stop Serbian forces killing and expelling ethnic Albanians making up the vast majority of the territory’s population. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and has since been recognized by more than 100 states.
Armenia has still not recognized the former Serbian province as an independent state. Russia, its closest ally, continues to strongly support Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.
Kosovo - Armenian soldiers walk in riot gear to a U.S. Black Hawk helicopter during a training exercise at Camp Bondsteel, March 12, 2014. (Photo courtesy of www.army.mil)
Even so, Yerevan reacted positively to a July 2010 ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that upheld the legality of Kosovo’s secession from Serbia. Meeting with his Kosovar counterpart in New York in September 2010, then Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian said the UN court thereby backed the principle of peoples’ right to self-determination.
Armenia has championed that principle in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Its leaders hoped that the ICJ decision will strengthen their case for similar international recognition of Karabakh’s de facto secession from Azerbaijan.
Also, some 35 Armenian soldiers have been serving in Kosovo as part of a NATO-led multinational force.
Incidentally, Nalbandian’s successor, Zohrab Mnatsakanian, met on Friday with Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, who represented his country at the Francophonie summit. According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, the two men discussed ways of boosting Serbian-Armenian “interaction within international bodies” as well as “a number of pressing regional issues.”