Hot-and-Cold Game: What Vučić is Asking from Foreigners to Stop "War Games" with Kosovo, Croatia, and BiH

The media machinery in neighboring Serbia is fully engaged and placed at the service of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić. Spin is rampant, from meetings with trusted individuals at a secret location (whether they happened at all), to raising tensions and heating up the atmosphere in the Balkans, to today's news that it is very possible Vučić will not appear at the meeting with the President of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolić, which will include politicians from RS, writes the Patria News Agency.

As Belgrade's "Blic" unofficially learns, Vučić told his associates today that he sees no point in the meeting that he and Nikolić agreed upon and scheduled with politicians from Republika Srpska.

It was supposed to be a meeting where important matters would be discussed, including the referendum in RS.

Vučić told his associates that he had an agreement with the President of RS, Milorad Dodik, and the Serb member of the Presidency of BiH, Mladen Ivanić, not to go public with their views before they all sat down and talked together.

However, after the interview Dodik gave to N1 television last night, Vučić sees no point in holding today's meeting and considers the agreement violated.

Vučić's position, according to "Blic's" source, is that Serbia should not appease the international community and considers it partially responsible for everything happening in the region, and that it will not pressure Republika Srpska.

It is becoming apparent that behind this game of Vučić's lies a well-thought-out plan of trade, in which politicians from RS and the smaller BiH entity serve as leverage and bargaining chips. Dodik did not give the interview on his own initiative, nor did he say anything that would displease Vučić.

On the contrary, everything is worked out in detail, and Vučić is the one who is supposed to profit on several fronts.

Serbia will have to recognize Kosovo, sooner or later, about which almost nothing is written in the neighboring country anymore, which is significant. Vučić must take this painful step, but in return, he will now seek from the "foreigners" the community of Serb municipalities in northern Kosovo.

This political manipulator skillfully uses the pre-election campaigns in Croatia and BiH, and again tries to exploit them as best as possible for himself and to profit.

From Croatia, or rather Brussels, he expects them to stop with the "attacks" on Serbia related to the arrest of suspects for war crimes committed on Croatian soil, and to leave it to Belgrade to be the "little Hague".

The story about the referendum and the scheduling of urgent meetings in Belgrade with politicians from RS, and the game of whether to interfere in BiH's internal affairs or not, serves Vučić as a good basis for trade - abandoning the revision of BiH's lawsuit against Serbia before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, for which the deadline is February 2017.

This is no longer a political game of hitting two birds with one stone, but three birds with one stone. Do "Bosniak unity" and pro-Bosnian forces have enough statesmanship and wisdom to respond to the game of the Serbian Prime Minister, who is no longer even hiding his goals?