No cigar: on Kosovo’s new deal, Catherine Ashton and the “single voice”

... Serbia and Kosovo was a three-pointer for Cathy Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief. But she seems unfit to face different challenges The deal, agreed after 10 rounds of direct talks between the countries’ leaders under the auspices of Catherine Ashton and the European External Action Service, is nothing short of a breakthrough. Though not concluding the recognition of Kosovo as an independent state by Serbia, if smoothly implemented, the agreement will end a deadlock in place since the end of the Kosovo War in 1999 – whereby Kosovo has had little to no control of its northern parts – and establish true ...