In winter 2001, President-elect Joe Biden, then a senator, visited Visoki Decani, a Serb Orthodox Monastery in Kosovo, during a post-war trip to what was then a U.N. protectorate.
While there (according to Mike Haltzel, Biden’s long-time foreign policy advisor), Biden briefly met Ramush Haradinaj, who had until recently been a guerilla fighter in Visoki Decani during the Kosovo war and who would later become prime minister of the country. Biden, eager to ensure the protection of Orthodox culture, asked Haradinaj for his personal assurances that he would give special care to the monastery. When violence again erupted in Kosovo three years later, dozens of Serbian Orthodox churches were demolished, but the monastery remained untouched. Years later, Haradinaj reportedly asked Haltzel to tell Biden that he had kept his promise.
