Below is an article published by The Wall Street Journal:

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has signaled he could propose changes to the country’s constitution that would include stripping out a reference to Kosovo as a Serbian province and could help its bid for European Union membership.

While the current government has always maintained its opposition to recognizing Kosovo’s 2008 independence, the move could make it much easier for a future Serbian administration to do so. Mr. Vucic’s comments, made in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, come at a time when EU-brokered talks aimed at normalizing ties between Kosovo and Serbia have lost some of their zest.

In February, Mr. Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Isa Mustafa met in Brussels to continue what is known as “the dialogue, the first top-level meeting in almost a year.” In the meantime, Mr. Vucic had won a landslide victory in Serbian elections in March last year. Mr. Mustafa took office in December after a six-month political standoff in Kosovo that followed June elections.

The February talks produced progress on one of the issues — integrating the justice and judiciary system in Kosovo — that still needed to be implemented from the 2013 Brussels Agreement between Belgrade and Pristina. That deal sought to guarantee protections and powers for the Serbian minority in Kosovo in return for acknowledging the primacy of Kosovo’s laws and institutions.

The two governments are still wrangling on other issues from the 2013 accord, above all the exact powers that will be given to the institution representing Serbian communities in Kosovo.

But in the interview, Mr. Vucic said he wouldn’t rule out asking Serbian voters to wording in their constitution’s preamble, adopted in 2006, that says that Kosovo “is an integral part of the territory of Serbia.”

Serbian media reported last month that Mr. Vucic had talked of changing the constitution in the next two to three years to push through changes demanded by Brussels as part of the country’s bid to join the EU. But in the interview, he said such changes wouldn’t happen because of Kosovo.

“We’ll have to discuss everything with our EU partners. We’ll have to discuss that with the Serbian people… I am not speaking about it but I am just saying that we need to have a very open discussion on Serbia’s future. And that’s it. We need to be very honest with our people. We need to see everything. OK, if we leave it here or we put it outside, what would that mean? And the people of Serbia should say their final word.”

Mr. Vucic, who said constitutional changes would be needed before the end of 2017, said he was opening the issue “although I knew that it was not very popular here in our country.”

Recognizing Kosovo isn’t a formal condition for Serbia to join the EU – there are still five EU countries, including Spain, which don’t recognize its independence. But many believe Belgrade will be under strong pressure to do this from Berlin, London and Brussels, longstanding supporters of Kosovar independence, if Serbia is to win membership.

Mr. Vucic’s move has risks. It will likely inflame nationalist sentiment in Serbia. Mr. Vucic, himself once a minister under Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic and a leading figure in the vehemently anti-Western Serbian Radical Party, already stands accused of selling out his principles to the West.

“The Brussels Agreement is silent recognition of Kosovo independence,” Nemanja Sarovic, deputy president of the Serbian Radical Party, said in an interview on Tuesday, referring to the 2013 deal.

He said it was only a matter of time before Mr. Vucic buckles to Western pressure to recognize Kosovo. “The only worry for him is how to present this well in the media to gain a few percent” in the polls, Mr. Sarovic said.

Yet Mr. Vucic may also face resistance from within his own party. The governing Serbian Progressive Party grew out of the roots of the Radical Party after Mr. Vucic and President Tomislav Nikolic defected to create the new force in 2008. Mr. Nikolic, who faces presidential elections in 2016 and is now seen as the less powerful of Serbia’s two leaders, has always struck a much tougher line on Kosovo.

Photo Courtesy of: The Wall Street Journal