The latest events in the north of Kosovo illustrate how fragile the region's stability is, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute Ted Carpenter said, adding that he does not expect further incidents.

The region's stability will remain fragile, because none of the problems has been solved, Carpenter stated for Tanjug.

He said that in the coming period he does not expect violent incidents similar to the ones that happened recently, but highlighted that the resolving of problems will take time.

The U.S. analyst added that it is highly questionable whether the forthcoming dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina will solve some of these problems.

The EU is imposing pressure on both sides to the dialogue, but that pressure is not equal, since Belgrade is under greater pressure not only to facilitate the dialogue, but also to make concessions, Carpenter said.

According to him, although the EU will never publicly present such a formal prerequisite, there is an implicit precondition for Serbia to recognize Kosovo's independence in order to join the EU.

That puts the Serbian government in an extremely delicate situation, since the EU accession is in Serbia's best interest. On the other hand, it would be highly difficult in political terms to endorse the Kosovo independence, especially if the other side is not willing to make concessions.

I think that the possibility of recognition would not be excluded in case of significant redrawing of borders, if, for example northern Kosovo would remain a part of Serbia, and especially in case of readiness to endorse the independence of Republika Srpska and possibly merge it with Serbia, Carpenter said.

According to him, in such a scenario, it would be easier for the Serbian authorities to make controversial decisions of the kind.

However, if the country does not receive anything but the vague promise of eventual EU entry, that is not enough for taking on the risk at the political level, he noted.

When asked to what extent the U.S. administration may have learnt in advance about the latest events in Kosovo, he said that most likely, it was for purely technical reasons that the U.S. had not received an official notification from the Pristina government about its future moves.

But the capacity of the U.S. intelligence is enormous, so I do not believe that these moves were a complete surprise for Washington, Carpenter concluded.