Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić says he has once again taken the issue of the Iber Bridge to American officials presenting a conversation in Belgrade as a message that has now, presumably, made its way to Washington.
Vučić said he spoke with US chargé d’affaires Aleksandar Titolo and was “sure” that his concerns had been passed on to the American capital.
According to Vučić, the matter is fundamentally about “people’s lives and their survival” in northern Kosovo. He also claimed that Kosovo intends to open the bridge on 1 September.
No evidence was offered to support that claim.
The statement is another example of Mr Vučić’s familiar approach to Kosovo: elevate a local and highly sensitive issue into a matter of international alarm, then portray his own diplomatic outreach as a significant intervention with Washington.
For now, however, what has been publicly established is considerably less dramatic:Vučić says he spoke to an American diplomat, and he believes the message was passed on.
Whether Washington regards the conversation with anything like the significance attributed to it in Belgrade is another question.
