Decisive 48 hours for Serbia

First, today the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe will vote on the addmissin of the so-called of Kosovo to that institution before the final decision of the Committee of Ministers on May 16, and secondly, on Wednesday, according to announcements, the Draft Resolution on Srebrenica will be presented to the UN, which will be voted on by UN members at the beginning of May.

Analysts believe that Serbia faces difficult challenges, but that there is still room for struggle.

In order for Pristina to skip the penultimate step towards joining the Council of Europe today, two thirds of the MPs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe need to vote.

Strahinja Subotić from the Center for European Policies points out for "Blic" that "all forecasts are that the so-called Kosovo will receive the green light on Tuesday at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe".

"Nevertheless, it is the Committee of Ministers that gives its consent and will make a definitive decision on May 16 on whether Kosovo will enter the Council of Europe, which leaves a certain, indeed limited, space for Serbia to lobby. For example, some countries that recognize Kosovo will not vote for its joining the Council of Europe. Hungary is an example of that," says Subotić.

Pristina announced that the so-called Kosovo Government will send the statute of the CSM to the Constitutional Court by May 10.

Subotic believes that this is "just an excuse for Pristina to get the green light to enter the Council of Europe and from the Committee of Ministers".

"Pristina will claim that the judiciary is independent and that everything must go through the legal procedure. We do not know what the final outcome will be, if we look only in black and white who recognizes and who does not recognize Kosovo, they have the numbers. But they had the numbers last year too, so Kosovo's admission to the Council of Europe was not voted on. There will be a lot of lobbying, many countries are aware of the importance of the CSM, and this could be a condition for Kosovo's entry into the Council of Europe," says Subotic.

Wednesday will be an equally difficult day for Serbia, as the Draft Resolution on Srebrenica will be presented at a closed meeting at the UN, which, according to announcements, declares July 11 as the International Day of Remembrance of the Genocide in Srebrenica.

The draft resolution calls, among other things, to condemn without reservation any denial of the genocide in Srebrenica and urges UN members to preserve established facts and develop appropriate programs through their educational systems, in order to "prevent revisionism and genocide in the future," Radio Free Europe says.

The UN member countries could declare themselves on the final resolution on Srebrenica at the session of the UN General Assembly in early May.

Aleksandar Popov, director of the Center for Regionalism, believes that the Resolution on Srebrenica will resemble similar documents that have already been adopted in the United Nations.

"That resolution, like all others, will have more moral-political than legal weight. We can expect a similar resolution as in connection with the genocide in Rwanda and that, for example, July 11 be declared the International Day of Remembrance of the Genocide in Srebrenica", Popov tells "Blic".

He thinks that the resolution on Srebrenica will most likely be voted in the UN.

"Germany would not launch this initiative if it could not pass the UN."

Although there are member states that have not recognized Kosovo, this does not mean that they will unreservedly vote against the Resolution on Srebrenica. It is mainly about small states that are dependent on big powers", concludes Popov.

On the other hand, Dragan Šutanovac, president of the Council for Strategic Policies, stated that "the very act of voting for the resolution on Srebrenica in the UN General Assembly was brought to absurdity" because, as he explained, "if 100 countries are present and only three vote and the result is two to one, that result is adopted".