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California Senator wants Balkan border revision

A generation after the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia and weeks following President Trump‘s withdrawal from nation-building ambitions, a California Congressman apparently plans to single-handily introduce border changes in the Balkans.

US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California has told the Albanian broadcaster Vision Plus that Macedonia is “not a country” but a “failed project” and should be split between Kosovo, Bulgaria, “or any other country to which they believe they are related.”

With a similar problem-solving attitude, Dana Rohrabacher chairs the US House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, and Emerging Threats. Recently, he wrote a letter to Serbia’s President, published by the Balkan Insight news site, Tomislav Nikolic, proposing the exchange of Albanian-speaking territories in southern Serbia with the Serbian enclave of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo.

The capital of the country the Senator believes should be liquidated, Skopje, says that such statements “inflame nationalist rhetoric” and expressed the certainty that the State Department would “dispel any doubt about the stated positions.”

Meanwhile, Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic reiterated on Monday that the former province of Kosovo is Serbian territory and accused Rohrabacher as being a member of the “Albanian lobby.” Apparently, the diplomatic experience of the Californian Senator has yet to be appreciated in the Balkans.