Under pressure from the EU and US, the Kosovo government said it wanted a new vote on the constitutional changes to set up the special court to prosecute alleged war crimes committed during the 1998-99 conflict, after not enough MPs voted in favour on Friday to pass the legislation.
Prime Minister Isa Mustafa said it was unfortunate that Kosovo was being asked to create such a court but it should fulfil its international obligations to do so, which were agreed with the EU.
“We think that in the coming days, the government of the Republic of Kosovo will coordinate activities in the Kosovo assembly with the parliamentary groups in order to work together, in order to proceed again with the case of constitutional amendments,” Mustafa told a cabinet meeting on Saturday.
Kosovo’s Western allies want the court to deal with allegations of killings and other alleged crimes by KLA guerrillas detailed in a 2011 Council of Europe report, but veterans’ groups and opposition parties claim that it is an insult to the KLA’s armed struggle to escape Serbian control during the conflict.
The US Embassy in Pristina said in a statement on Saturday it was “deeply disappointed” by the failed vote, the AP news agency reported.
It also said it would not be able to block Russian attempts to establish a United Nations tribunal to probe allegations of KLA crimes against Serbs if lawmakers did not back the special court, according to AP. Russia is a longstanding ally of Serbia and strongly opposes Kosovo’s independence.
The head of the European Union’s office in Kosovo, Samuel Zbogar, also said he was disappointed with the outcome of Friday’s vote.
“Kosovo has no alternative but to deal with the serious allegations from the Council of Europe report of 2011,” Zbogar said.
He added however that the EU would “continue to work with the Kosovo institutions” to ensure that this happened.
Deputy prime minister Hashim Thaci said at Saturday’s cabinet meeting that Kosovo needs to create the special court in order to move forward on European integration and avoid political and economic penalties.
“The political damage could be big, also damage could be caused to [Kosovo’s] Euro-Atlantic perspective, as well as damage [in terms of] large economic sanctions and [to] a safe perspective for the people of Kosovo,” Thaci said.
Three opposition parties who voted against the special court gathered on Sunday meanwhile to discuss their next moves.
Ramush Haradinaj, leader of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, who hosted the meeting, said that the opposition parties agreed that instead of the new special court, which is expected to be physically based in the Netherlands, there should be a court which will operate in Kosovo.
“We are for [the creation of] a Kosovo court and against a selective judiciary,” Haradinaj told media.
The head of Serbian government’s office for Kosovo, Marko Djuric, meanwhile urged the United Nations to set up the court if the Pristina government fails to do it.
“We call on the United Nations to take justice into their its hands, as Albanian politicians in Pristina don’t have the strength to prosecute those responsible for war crimes, who should not remain unpunished,” Djuric told media.
The mandate for the court is derived from the 2011 report by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, who claimed that crimes against civilians such as kidnapping, torture and organ-harvesting were committed by members of the KLA during the conflict.
The report implicated Thaci, the former political head of the KLA and the ex-prime minister of Kosovo, who is now foreign minister as well as deputy prime minister. Thaci strongly denies the allegations.
