Vetevendosje leader, Albin Kurti, said in an interview to the Sarajevo-based television channel TV1 that the Ramush Haradinaj-led government of Kosovo will not last long as it only has 52 of a total of 120 MPs. “We expected Mr. Haradinaj to be different but ever since he sat on the prime minister’s chair, he has continued with concessions to Serbia and neoliberal privatisations as his predecessors,” Kurti said.
Speaking about the dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia, Kurti said that Kosovo President Hashim Thaci is “very weak” to lead the process as he is very much afraid of a possible indictment by the specialist chambers while Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic wants to reach a “compromise solution” before Kosovo forms its own army and because Serbia cannot join the EU without recognising independence of Kosovo. “The people of Kosovo, the opposition, despite the readiness of our president to make concessions to Vucic, will not allow this to happen as we have the experience of Bosnia and we cannot let it be repeated in Kosovo,” Kurti said.
Kurti said that the biggest problem in the Western Balkans is Serbia as it imitates Russia, “like a small octopus with tentacles stretched throughout the region.” “In Bosnia, it has the Republika Srpska, in Montenegro it has its parties that do not recognise independence of Montenegro and oppose its membership in NATO. In Kosovo, it has its parallel structures and control over the northern part, while in Macedonia it controls the opposition there,” Kurti said of Serbia adding: “I think it wants to impose itself as the main stabilizing force in the region by having the biggest destabilization power”.
Asked on who bears the responsibility for the arrest of Serbian government official Marko Djuric in the north of Kosovo last month, Kurti said: “The responsibility of Pristina is that this arrest happened ten years too late”. Kurti said the government of Kosovo made a spectacle of the arrest at a time when it was making concessions to Serbia. With regards to the killing of the Kosovo Serb political leader, Oliver Ivanovic, Kurti said Ivanovic was a convicted war criminal who seems to have felt remorse for his actions and decided to testify of “Serb crimes committed in Kosovo”.
