ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Serbian officials warned of another war in the Balkans, an infamous historical flashpoint for human conflict, if Albania moves forward with moves to create a ‘super-Albanian’ state for Muslims on the Balkan Peninsula, namely Kosovo.

Serbia fought a war with Islamic members of Kosovo in the ‘90s who wanted to secede from greater Serbia and form their own state. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, bombed Serbian forces to prevent the genocide that was happening during the conflict and to force peace.

Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, a former ultranationalist turned pro-EU reformer, said that the unification between Albania and Kosovo “will remain only wishful thinking” and called on the EU to react.

“If I said that all Serbs should live in one state, I would be hanged from a flagpole in Brussels,” Vucic said, The Associated Press reported.

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said an interview with Politico journal that a union between Albania and ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo cannot be ruled out if European Union membership prospects for the Western Balkans do not materialize. Serbian government minister Aleksandar Vulin publicly stated he expected the European Union and NATO to forcibly renounce such statements to prevent another Balkan conflict.

Vulin said that another war in the region would include Macedonia and Montenegro which have large ethnic-Albanian populations. This would force Serbia to align with the smaller ethnic Serbian country, Bosnia.

World War I was started in the Balkans with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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