Thaci warns PDK MPs to vote in favor of special court (Zeri)
Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) leader Hashim Thaci told PDK MPs in a recent meeting that if they don’t vote in favor of the special court he will dismiss them from the party and will not include them in election lists if the country goes to early national elections in autumn. The paper claims to have learned the information from a source that was present at the meeting. The source also said that Thaci was very harsh with his MPs after senior international officials blamed him for the failure to pass the special court legislation in the Assembly. “None of the MPs, who initially voted against the special court, replied to Thaci when he threatened to dismiss them from the party and not include them in election lists in the event of early parliamentary elections,” the source said.
Tahiri: No Association without dissolution of illegal structures (Zeri)
In an interview for the paper, Kosovo’s Minister for Dialogue Edita Tahiri, says that the European Union should convince Belgrade to start implementing the Agreement on Free Movement and to resolve the matter in a couple of days. Tahiri said the agreement was not cancelled, as reported in some media, but that the implementation did not commence as Belgrade failed to make the technical preparations. Commenting on the implementation of the Association/Community of Serb-majority Municipalities, Tahiri said the mechanism could be formed only after the dissolution of Serb illegal structures in the northern part of the country.
Kosovo has applied for UNESCO membership through UNMIK (Koha)
The paper reports that Kosovo has applied for membership of UNESCO through the UN Office in Pristina (UNMIK). Kosovo’s membership request was signed by President Atifete Jahjaga and Principal Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci. However, according to sources in the Kosovo Foreign Ministry, the application process should have been done differently. A source told the paper that although the Foreign Ministry had recommended for the request for membership to be done directly and not through a third party, the recommendation was not taken into account. “Petrit Selimi [Kosovo’s Deputy Foreign Minister] submitted the application to UNMIK chief Farid Zarif who then forwarded it to UNESCO through the UN Secretariat. This is why even a week after the application, they [UNESCO] have not received Kosovo’s request, because it is somewhere in the UN hallways in New York,” the source said. The UNMIK Information Office in Pristina did not comment on the issue. Asked for a comment, UN Information Officer Shpend Berbatovci told the paper that UNESCO should provide answers on the matter.
