The Serbian media outlet "Novosti" published an article yesterday (June 02) claiming that the US is "postponing" Kosovo's membership in NATO.
Furthermore, this article states that “official Washington has activated all diplomatic engines in order to try to secure NATO membership for Pristina, despite Kosovo’s refusal to join the United Nations.” This Serbian media outlet has tried to argue this claim with a statement by Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, and with the opinions of several Serbian military experts.
However, none of these statements contain any argumentative basis for the claim made.
In an attempt to argue this claim, this Serbian media outlet has published a statement by Vučić made on the show "Cirilica" on the Serbian television channel "Tv Happy", where he said that "The idea of Kosovo's membership in NATO, in case membership in the UN fails, pushed by the US, has also been launched by Daniel Serwer, a professor at John Hopkins University, together with a Serb."
"The idea is to raise the relationship between Spain, Greece, Slovakia and Romania in Pristina to a certain level, because they don't need Cyprus for that. Then the Americans would come forward with a bilateral request, in which they would say that, on behalf of Kosovo, they are presenting a request for Kosovo's entry into NATO and for its acceptance into the Alliance. This would also tie Serbia's hands and create countless problems. And this is one of the ways of putting serious pressure on me and Serbia."
Vučić's statement, as can be understood, is not based on any credible source, and appears to be his own opinion. The only reference used by the Serbian head of state is an opinion by expert Daniel Serwer (here), who is a university professor, but does not represent any official US opinion.
Link to Aleksandar Vučić's interview on the Serbian television "Tv Happy":
Further in this article, the opinions of several security experts in Serbia are discussed who, like Vučić himself, make analysis not based on any official source.
Link to the article by the Serbian media outlet "Novosti", which also includes analyses by Serbian security experts:
The claim of the author of the Novosti article, for Kosovo's "fast-track" membership in NATO, is not even based on the criteria that this military alliance has for accepting new members. To address this issue, Hibrid.info has reviewed a recent report by the Netherlands Institute for Foreign Affairs "Clingendael" together with the Kosovar organization "Democracy for Development" (D4D), which describes the security situation in Kosovo, the formation of the army and the path to NATO membership.
This report states that there is no short path to NATO membership. However, in the case of Kosovo, considering the development of the KSF (as the future army of Kosovo) from the beginning until now, according to all NATO technical-operational criteria and standards, then Kosovo is not expected to face technical conditions regarding membership when the process of entering the Partnership for Peace program opens and when the path towards formal NATO membership officially begins. However, the political obstacles in this case will be those that are blocking and will block NATO membership – with particular emphasis on reaching a final agreement with Serbia and the recognition of the state of Kosovo by four non-recognizing NATO states (Greece, Romania, Slovakia and Spain).
Link to the report published by "Clingendael" and "D4D":
Analyze:
From the fact-checking carried out by hibrid.info, it results that the claim made by the author of the article published in the Serbian media "Novosti", does not present any facts and no credible source that can be argued. The article is built only with a statement by Serbian President Vučić and experts which, just like the claim made in the title, have no argumentative basis.
Based on this fact check, the hibrid.info team decides to assess this article, the claims of President Vučić as well as the experts as "Conspiracy Theory".
Reasoning:
"Conspiracy theories" are media reports that disseminate a false or unverifiable description of a phenomenon, event, or person, presenting it as part of or the result of a secret plan ("conspiracy"). A characteristic of these reports is that they present a series of claims, presented as facts, between which cause-effect relationships are established, without providing any credible evidence.