Wrote: Endrit Berisha
An article claims that the President of the United States of America (US), Joe Biden, has decided to appoint a special envoy on the issue of recognition of Kosovo by the five non-recognizing states from the European Union.
"Who is Biden's confidant who will be appointed 'special envoy for the recognition of Kosovo'?" is the title of the article published by the Albanian-language medium "euronews.al", which was also broadcast by several information portals in Kosovo.
What's wrong with this article?
After verification by hibrid.info, it turns out that Joe Biden has not proposed any special envoy for the recognition of Kosovo by EU states. It is only a proposal from a group of experts, in a report published in 2022.
“From Crisis to Convergence: A Strategy to Overcome Instability in the Balkans, at Its Core,” is the title of the report dated January 18, 2022, published by the Wilson Center and the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins SAIS. This report was updated after being re-shared by American professor Edward Joseph on May 27 on the platform X (formerly Twitter)Joseph is the lead author of the report.
Link to the article posted by "euronews.al":
"United States (US) President Joe Biden should appoint a 'special envoy for Kosovo recognition' from the European Union (EU) five - Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Romania and Cyprus. Biden proposed Edward Joseph for this position, a lecturer at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, in a recent report," it is stated in the introduction to the "euronews.al" article.
The article continues with Joseph's proposal
“'The Biden administration could boost the bid for convergence through the simultaneous appointment of a new special envoy dedicated to Kosovo recognition, in parallel with the announcement of US sanctions on leaders in Albania or Kosovo who promote the unification of Kosovo and Albania,' Joseph wrote on recent developments in the Western Balkans,” continues the article from "euronews.al"
This quote appears to be taken from the 2022 report, mentioned above (see here(page 65)
The original part of the report in English, which was translated into an article by "euronews.al":
"The Biden Administration can spur the bid for convergence by the simultaneous appointment of a new Special Envoy devoted to Kosovo Recognition, along with the announcement of US sanctions for leaders in Albania or Kosovo who promote any 'union' of these two independent countries."
The content of "euronews.al" has also been published by several information portals in the country:
https://ghostarchive.org/archive/WILLS
Through online search engines, hibrid.info has not been able to find any news from recent days that link the name of Edward Joseph with the US special envoy on the issue of Kosovo recognition. (see here)
Analyze:
An article claims that the President of the United States of America, Joe Biden, has decided to appoint a special envoy for the issue of Kosovo recognition. "Euronews.al" has mentioned Professor Edward Joseph as the proposed one.
After verification by hibrid.info, it turns out that the proposal was actually from Joseph himself and a group of experts, in a 2022 publication in the report titled "From Crisis to Convergence: A Strategy to Overcome Instability in the Balkans, Fundamentally."
The "euronews.al" article was also picked up by several news portals in Kosovo.
Based on its work methodology, hibrid.info assesses this claim as "Unverified Content" and "Disinformation".
Reasoning:
The "Unverified" rating is given to those informative contents that do not provide sufficient information to confirm the claims made in the report, and which could not be verified due to certain circumstances (speed, lack of sources) during the publication of the content.
"Disinformation" is defined as information content that contains a "mix" of inaccurate sources or even half-truthful attributes, and that is created and/or distributed with the deliberate intention of causing harm. The motive behind the producers/distributors of disinformation content lies in achieving a political, financial, psychological or social goal.