The country's President, Vjosa Osmani, is staying in Washington at the invitation of a group of American congressmen, to participate in the National Morning Prayers. Experts in international relations see her visit to the US as positive, although, according to them, the Morning Prayers are not an event of "great significance."
Morning Prayers are held annually, on the first Thursday of February, and are attended by senior American politicians and foreign guests.
University professor Dritëro Arifi says that after the change of the American administration, every visit to Washington is positive. But according to him, Osmani himself is part of the "deformation of relations with the US."
"We know that [relations] are at their lowest point in Kosovo's history, although the president is unfortunately part of this distortion of relationships. We remember the beginning of the happiness of Vetëvendosje and the president, and when those relationships were damaged, then you remembered that relationships are not good. However, better late than never, we are hoping that those meetings will produce something concrete. But knowing that the decision-making power for any agreement lies with the government, the presidency will be crippled in this case in this regard, it will have very little influence to build something," he says.
According to Arifi, the National Morning Prayers are not of great importance.
"Morning prayers are more of a secondary issue than a major one. But our presence at those events is very important for us, where we can have very important meetings at different levels. I believe the president does a very good job of representing Kosovo, but this remains largely theoretical. In practical terms, we have done an enormous amount of damage to these Kosovo-US relations because we have not coordinated our internal policies, where some kind of coordination has been required of us. We have made fun of the word 'coordination' and we will suffer the consequences," he adds for KosovaPress.
Jeta Loshaj from the Kosovo Center for Security Studies (KCSS) says that at this event Kosovo was represented by the highest level of the country.
"It is important that Kosovo continues to be a reliable ally of the United States of America, because there are many unknowns, there is a lot of unpredictability in terms of world developments. We ourselves will have elections and it is not known what kind of government we will have for the next four years. But the administration has also changed in the US and we cannot expect that the United States of America will always have Kosovo or this part of the Western Balkans as a priority. And from what we have seen in the new US administration, the new President Trump has announced several new decisions that show that there will be other priorities. So it is not known whether Kosovo or the Western Balkans region or all of Southeast Europe will be on the US agenda," Loshaj concludes.
Osmani spoke at the Inter-Parliamentary Security Forum about "the journey of the people of Kosovo from the greatest challenges to today's achievements."
Participating from Albania were MP Damian Gjiknuri and former Minister of Defense Fatmir Mediu, while from Serbia was former Speaker of Parliament Vladimir Marinkovic.
In Washington, Osmani also met with the acting Assistant Secretary of State, Louis Bono.
On the other hand, Osmani did not attend the inauguration of US President Donald Trump two weeks ago.
She said she acted similarly to many world leaders who had an invitation but authorized a lower level of representation./KosovaPress
