Vjosa Osmani (file photo)<\/span><\/div>\n“I think we have delays that should not be justified,” Osmani told reporters. “Other countries in the region are ahead of us, so we must and will demand responsibility from the government for why we are not prepared and it is expected that, in all likelihood, vaccines will arrive sometime after April.”<\/p>\n
She also said that in addition to any COVAX vaccines, Kosovo’s government should be trying to obtain vaccines from other EU countries.<\/p>\n
Political Preening?<\/strong><\/big><\/p>\nAlthough the numbers are slippery, at least 100,000 or so of Kosovo’s residents are ethnic Serbs, mostly in the north but also in scattered communities in the south.<\/p>\n
Belgrade maintains a shadow health-care system in many of those regions.<\/p>\n
Serbia, a regional economic power, led the area in kicking off its vaccination effort thanks to the arrival of nearly 5,000 doses of the Pfizer\/BioNTech serum on December 22.<\/p>\n
Two days later, it became the third country in Europe to start inoculating with the Pfizer vaccine, after the United Kingdom and Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Its use everywhere but Switzerland has so far relied on emergency-use authorizations following extensive testing.<\/p>\n
Serbia is currently testing the Russian-made Sputnik-V vaccine and has reportedly been negotiating for Sinopharm’s Chinese vaccine.<\/p>\n
While it is unclear if or when regulatory approval might come from Serbian laboratories, concerns about a lack of testing and transparency have dogged the Russian vaccine in particular.<\/p>\n
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Is Serbia’s Vucic playing politics with vaccines?<\/span><\/div>\nVucic, who burnished his ultranationalist credentials opposing Kosovo’s bid for independence in the 1990s, cultivates strong formal and informal ties between Serbia’s government and ethnic Serbian communities in Kosovo and other neighboring countries.<\/p>\n
Arton Demhasaj, director of the Kosovo-based NGO Cohu!, a think tank that promotes democracy and anti-corruption efforts, said he believed Vucic’s apparent vaccination politics in northern Kosovo were aimed at provoking Pristina.<\/p>\n
“He now expects institutional reactions from Kosovo and then this will be used in the international arena as ‘Lo and behold, even for a humanitarian intervention for Serb citizens in Kosovo, these are the reactions,'” Demhasaj told RFE\/RL.<\/p>\n
He suggested that even securing the vaccine so quickly — even ahead of many EU countries — was part of a deliberate political show on Vucic’s part.<\/p>\n
“First bring it to Kosovo and wait for the reaction of our institutions, and then use that politically,” Demhasaj said. “I think this shouldn’t have been allowed to happen.”<\/p>\n
Written by Andy Heil based on reporting by Bekim Bislimi of RFE\/RL’s Balkan Service with contributions by Maja Ficovic from North Mitrovica and Sandra Cvetkovic from Gracanica<\/h6>\n
IMAGE:
https:\/\/gdb.rferl.org\/29e1465a-c5a3-4c05-9813-376db860f2be.jpg<\/p>\n\n
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