My predecessor as ambassador to the former Yugoslavia left me a four-word handover note. “Believe nothing, trust nobody.” It was useful advice in the Belgrade of the 1990s. But when two political figures in the region, the President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, and the President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaci, who’ve never trusted each other and still make no pretence of liking each other, defy received wisdom and jointly propose mutual land swaps between their countries, then even the most sceptical of us should sit up and pay attention and, well, trust them. What Vucic and Thaci propose could finally lance the boil of the long-running “Kosovo question” and put in place an historic peace settlement.
The two men were bitter opponents during the Kosovo war in 1999, when a Nato bombing campaign brought an end to Serbia’s control of its erstwhile autonomous province.