• COVID-19: 1,283 new cases, six deaths (media)
• Kosovo introduces new COVID-19 measures (media)
• No more mandatory vaccination to enter Kosovo (euronews.al)
• Kurti: We will engage in preserving legitimate rights of Decan Monastery (Koha)
• Serbian Orthodox Church: Kurti and Konjufca not telling the truth (media)
• Kurti received members of German Bundestag (media)
• Kosovo Defence Minister warns EU and NATO of Russian-Serbian influence in the region (media)
• Demokracia: Government of Kosovo has four conditions for Serbian elections in Kosovo (media)
• France’s ambassador speaks visa liberalisation, dialogue (Telegrafi)
• Sainovic: If we were offered Resolution 1244 in Rambouillet, there would be no war (media)
• Kosovo War Crime Victims Failing to Get Compensation, Official Warns (BIRN)
• Op-ed: The hypocrisy of Serb Municipality Associations while the Presevo Valley is ethnically cleansed (Exit)
• Belgian constitution interesting for Kosovo, says ambassador (EurActiv)
• Ukraine’s Ambassador to Tirana speaks on war, Albania, and Kosovo (Exit)
• Montenegro’s pro-Serbian governing coalition collapses (AP)

COVID-19: 1,283 new cases, six deaths (media)

1,283 new cases of COVID-19 and six deaths have been recorded in Kosovo in the last 24-hour period, the Ministry of Health said. 4,397 persons recovered during this time.

There are 26,977 active cases of COVID-19 in Kosovo.

Express notes that the total number of COVID-19 related deaths since the start of the pandemic in Kosovo is 3,043 while the number of vaccine doses administered so far is 1,792,775.

Kosovo introduces new COVID-19 measures (media)

The Government of Kosovo approved on Friday a range of new, relaxed, measures against COVID-19.

The new measures, which entered into force on 5 February, specify that persons entering Kosovo should have certificate of two-dose vaccine or one in the case of J&J type, or if only one dose has been received the persons entering Kosovo should also present a negative PCR test. The mask mandate from now on applies only to indoor space while the curfew has been set from midnight to 5 a.m. Bars and restaurants will be allowed to operate until 11 p.m.

No more mandatory vaccination to enter Kosovo (euronews.al)

From today, all travellers to Kosovo must show proof of a negative COVID test in order to cross the border, instead of what was previously the case, when they had to provide a vaccination certificate that showed proof of all 3 anti-COVID shots. These are the updated rules to enter Kosovo:

Travellers can now cross the border with a vaccination certificate that shows they took two vaccines or a single Johnson dose.

However, if they’ve only gotten one of the other vaccine brands, they will need to provide proof of a negative PCR or rapid test as well.

Those exempt from the above-mentioned rules will be travelers entering Kosovo by air or through any of the other border crossings and who will be leaving the country within a 3-hour time limit. This option will be available to them under the condition that they sign a declaration upon entry, stating that they will be leaving the country in no more than 3 hours.

Kurti: We will engage in preserving legitimate rights of Decan Monastery (Koha)

Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti said the Government will be engaged in preserving the legitimate rights of the Orthodox Monastery in Decan.

He called on religious leaders of the Monastery to “do their part” by seeking a solution through a dialogue with the local population and that, he said, such a thing is possible.

“We are aware that the decisions of the Constitutional Court need to be upheld, but we also have to bear in mind the controversies accompanying the property issue around the Monastery in the historic and legal sense. First, everything originates with the decision of the Government of Serbia in 1997 when the lands were given to the Monastery through a discriminatory way because they were the property of two public enterprises. Second, the Monastery of Decan does not have an independent legal identity because it legally belongs to the Serbian Orthodox Church. It is a little surprising how the Monastery was recognized the right of a party in the case as is the involvement of the Constitutional Court in this process giving the right to the Monastery. The issue of land ownership around the Monastery had not been decided by any relevant Court and the Constitutional Court I believe should not have taken a decision on an issue without consuming all other legal instances. Decan Monastery as we all know is part of the rich cultural mosaic of Kosovo. Unfortunately, the Serbian Orthodox Church is the one that has been repeatedly misused by Serbia as a political instrument against Kosovo and the Albanians. We will do our utmost to preserve the legitimate rights of the Monastery but its religious leaders should do their part by seeking solutions through dialogue and agreements with the local population and I believe that such a thing is possible,” Kurti said at a press conference on Friday.

Serbian Orthodox Church: Kurti and Konjufca not telling the truth (media)

The Serbian Orthodox Church has reacted to the statements of Prime Minister Albin Kurti on the property issue involving the Monastery of Decan.

The Serbian Orthodox Church said that the statements are inaccurate. “If we take a brief look at the court procedure, we can see that it lasted sixteen years before the courts of Kosovo. During that process, the Monastery of Decan has suffered not only threats, but also physical and armed attacks, organized protests, attempts to block the entrance to the monastery and slanderous campaigns.”

The Church added: “Such actions not only reflect the situation in Kosovo institutions, but also reveal open discrimination against the Serbian Orthodox Church. Furthermore, such actions clearly show what the fate of the Serbian Orthodox Church in this area would be, if it were left entirely at the mercy of Kosovo institutions.”

According to Serbian Orthodox Church, the implementation of the decision of the Constitutional Court is a necessary condition “to prove to us that the dialogue would not be just a stunt for foreign cameras and officials and that there is a real readiness to stop a systematic campaign of discrimination and open hostility towards the Serbian Orthodox Church.”

Kosovo Assembly Speaker Glauk Konjufca had earlier stated that the judges of the Constitutional Court did not uphold the Constitution of Kosovo in their ruling legitimising ownership of the property in question to the Orthodox Monastery and that they viewed at the case outside its political and historic dimension.

Kurti received members of German Bundestag (media)

The Prime Minister of Kosovo Albin Kurti received on Sunday members of the German Parliament, Christian Petry, from the Social Democratic Party SPD and Boris Mijatovic, from the Green Party.

MP Petry thanked the Prime Minister for the meeting. He stressed that he is happy that Kosovo is aligned with the countries that are moving towards the European Union. As a Social Democrat, Petry said he wished to personally congratulate Prime Minister Kurti on the new government under his leadership, a press release issued by the Government of Kosovo notes.

The deputies are said to have expressed interested in the current situation as well as bilateral relations with neighbouring countries. The Prime Minister stressed that he hopes that Chancellor Scholz returns the Berlin Process to the attention of actors in the European Union.

MP Mijatovic stressed the importance of the fact that the coalition agreement of the German government emphasizes the territorial integrity of Bosnia and that this applies to the entire region.

The situation with COVID-19 and the new protection measures were also discussed at the meeting. Kurti said that over 60% of the population over 16 years of age are already vaccinated, while vaccination is continuing with the boosting dose.

Kosovo Defence Minister warns EU and NATO of Russian-Serbian influence in the region (media)

Kosovo Defence Minister, Armend Mehaj, said they are closely following recent developments related to Ukraine and asked NATO’s increased attention to prevent, as he said, the influence of Russian and Serbian circles in the region.

“The Ministry of Defence is closely following the recent developments and actions of Russia against Ukraine, countries of NATO’s eastern wing, as well as hybrid activities of Russia in the Western Balkan region,” Mehaj wrote on Facebook. He added that “Russia is carrying out its hybrid war activities in our region with the help of Serbia, in continuity with political war and unconventional destabilization methods combined with asymmetric activities such as cyber-attacks and fake news. Therefore, we call for increased attention of NATO’s political and military authorities through the Joint Force Command Naples in our region, to prevent the influence of destabilizing Russian-Serbian circles supported also by Chinese circles in the region,” Mehaj said.

Demokracia: Government of Kosovo has four conditions for Serbian elections in Kosovo (media)

On April 3, Serbia holds parliamentary and presidential elections, and leaders are seeking to enable Kosovo Serbs to vote.

Demokracia.com news website claims that Kosovo’s Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration, Development and Dialogue Besnik Bislimi has submitted a concrete proposal to the EU Special Envoy for Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue Miroslav Lajcak, on allowing Serbia to hold elections in Kosovo.

Discussions on whether or not Serbia will be allowed to hold elections in Kosovo have been taking place for a long time now. The referendum was not allowed to take place and the heads of institutions have repeatedly stated that they will no longer allow Serbia to hold elections in Kosovo.

However, Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi has already made a concrete four point proposal on allowing Serbian elections to be held in Kosovo, to the EU envoy for the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue Miroslav Lajcak, as an acceptable modality to the Kurti government.

Demokracia.com has learned from European diplomats that the proposal handed over to the EU Special Envoy for Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, by Deputy Prime Minister Besnik Bislimi notes:

Serbia will be allowed to hold elections in Kosovo if it uses the name “Serbia Liaison Office in Kosovo” in all documents and polling stations. The government of Kosovo agrees to grant immunity and diplomatic privileges to polling stations and individuals involved in the organization of elections; The OSCE Mission to Kosovo organizes the holding of elections and the collection of votes at polling stations; Serbian political parties and politicians will not be allowed to campaign in the territory of Kosovo; Reciprocity applies to Kosovo citizens living in Serbia based on the same practice.

France’s ambassador speaks visa liberalisation, dialogue (Telegrafi)

The France’s Ambassador to Kosovo, Marie-Christine Butel, said in an interview with Telegrafi news website that France, and some other EU member states, still considers that Kosovo has not entirely met all conditions for visa liberalisation.

“There have been positive developments from the Kosovo side, such as the approval by the Assembly of Kosovo in November 2018 of a package of laws aimed at strengthening the rule of law. However, these laws have not yet produced tangible and lasting effects. It is therefore important that the implementation of reforms by the entire state apparatus of Kosovo continues and that the adopted laws are fully implemented. For this reason France considers, together with some other member states, that all the required conditions have not yet been fully met at this stage,” she said.

On the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue Butel said France fully supports the efforts of the EU Special Representative Miroslav Lajcak and that together with Germany it organised a summit between leaders of France, Germany, Kosovo, and Serbia in Berlin in 2019 and then in Paris in 2020. “It is essential that the signed agreements be implemented by both parties and that discussions continue in Brussels to reach a comprehensive, final and legally binding agreement.”

Sainovic: If we were offered Resolution 1244 in Rambouillet, there would be no war (media)

A member of the Serbian delegation to the Rambouillet peace conference in 1999, Nikola Sainovic, says that for Serbia the negotiations were an “ultimatum” of the “take it or leave it” type.

“The first break was made when the KLA did not accept anything but Kosovo’s independence. We accepted the political part of the agreement, because it only included self-government, but we did not accept the military part, to accept the occupation of Yugoslavia,” he told Kosovo-Online news portal.

Sainovic says that in Rambouillet it was determined that the fate of Kosovo should be decided after three years according to the principles of the will of the people, a referendum in Kosovo, where they would declare independence and that would be the end.”

He says that if Security Council Resolution 1244 “had been offered to us in Rambouillet, our delegation would have accepted it and there would have been no war.”

Sainovic accuses the internationals, who according to him “have not even listened to Serbia’s arguments”.

“It took them 78 days to remember Resolution 1244, they could have done it in Rambouillet, but they clearly needed a war,” he said.

He says that Serbia aimed to define the basic principles for later events, as was done in Dayton, Albanian Post reports.

“Where the sovereignty of the former Yugoslav federation in Kosovo would be respected, then we would discuss autonomy,” he said.

Kosovo War Crime Victims Failing to Get Compensation, Official Warns (BIRN)

Nesrin Lushta, head of Kosovo’s Committee for Crime Victims Compensation, who is also a Supreme Court judge, said that not a single victim of war crimes in the country has received any compensation for their suffering.

Six years after Kosovo established a Committee for Crime Victims Compensation, thousands of victims of crime have received assistance, but not a single victim of war crimes.

This is despite the fact that more than two decades after the 1998-99 Kosovo war, the country’s courts have tried dozens of people for war crimes. However, no restitution has been awarded to victims in verdicts in cases against former members of Serbian forces or in cases against former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas.

This is because, according to the law, courts should instruct victims in war crime trials to claim compensation in civil proceedings. But this is complicated, officials say.

Compensation from the state can be requested if the victim is unable to get restitution from the convicted defendant or from other sources.

But Nesrin Lushta, head of the Committee for Crime Victims Compensation, which is part of the Ministry of Justice and enables victims of violent crimes to apply for compensation payments, cautioned that the situation for victims in war crime cases “is challenging in many aspects”.

“It is a bit difficult to deal properly with this category of victims [of war crimes] because the law came into force in 2015 and we cannot compensate victims retroactively,” Lushta told BIRN in an interview.

Read more at: https://bit.ly/34mZjvY

Op-ed: The hypocrisy of Serb Municipality Associations while the Presevo Valley is ethnically cleansed (Exit)

The Tirana-based news website carries an opinion piece by its co-editor, Alice Taylor, on the recent developments in Kosovo. She writes:

This week, the EU and US envoys for the Western Balkans have been on a diplomatic trip to Kosovo and Serbia in a bid to move the stagnant dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia on a bit. As usual, most of the pressure was piled onto Kosovo, which is expected to make significant concessions while its larger and arguably more powerful neighbour fails to do the same.

At a press conference this week, the EU’s envoy Miroslav Lajcak and his US counterpart Gabriel Escobar said that the stalled 2015 agreement on the Association of Serb-majority municipalities in Kosovo should be implemented.

This association would be self-governing, existing within Kosovo, and comprise the municipalities with a Serb majority, including North Mitrovica, Zubin Potok, Leposavic, Zvecan, and several others. It would have complete oversight of matters relating to economics, health, education, infrastructure and planning, and development.

“Kosovo is an equal party in the dialogue, which means that nothing can be imposed on Kosovo without an agreement. Nobody wants a Republika Srpska, but what has been agreed must be implemented; the association is one of them,” Lajcak said.

They called on both countries to be constructive and present their own models for how the agreement should be rolled out, taking the option of it being repealed off the table.

The problem is that since the signing of the agreement, Kosovo’s Constitutional Court found that such an association would be unconstitutional, and the agreement needed amending. Furthermore, Prime Minister Albin Kurti said that setting up the constitution would go against the constitution or require changing it.

“To create a mono-ethnic Association in Kosovo, we should change the constitution. The constitution we have cannot afford a mono-ethnic Association. Therefore, the Constitutional Court has ruled that in total 23 articles of the constitution are violated by each of the seven chapters of the Serb-Majority Municipalities’ Association,” Kurti told RTK on July 1.

Kurti has also compared the proposed model to the current Bosnia and Herzegovina model, which continues to fail for all intents and purposes.

Kosovo has been clear that the association is a no-go. The constitutional court says no, elected political leaders say no- this should be more than enough for the EU and US. After all, it is a sovereign state and should retain full autonomy over every decision. To ask a country to go against the advice of its highest court takes diplomatic meddling to a whole other level.

But the real point I want to raise here is the hypocrisy from the US and EU in pressuring Kosovo, while the plight of Albanians in the Presevo Valley goes unnoticed.

In southern Serbia lies the Presevo Valley, home to most of the country’s Albanian population. But over the last decade, the Serbian government has been engaging in “ethnic cleansing through administrative means” of the Albanian population.

Read more: https://bit.ly/3uDxPN8

Belgian constitution interesting for Kosovo, says ambassador (EurActiv)

Belgium’s constitutional model cannot be copied in other countries but some of its elements may be interesting to consider in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Koen Adam, Belgium’s Ambassador to Serbia, told the Beta agency in an interview.

Asked about the German-speaking community in eastern Belgium and the media speculation that the EU could propose the model as a solution for the Union of the Serb Municipalities in Kosovo, the ambassador said his country has a very specific constitutional system, parts or procedures of which “might serve as inspiration for problems elsewhere in the world.”

“During my career, I explained to all my interlocutors that Belgium is a country that exports many things, but not its constitutional model. We have a rather sophisticated model of constitutional engineering, designed to offer solutions to Belgium’s problems. It is not something you can copy to another situation,” the ambassador said.

Belgium supports the efforts of the EU and its special representative for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Miroslav Lajčák, “to bring both sides closer to the set goal, a legally binding comprehensive agreement that would lead to the normalisation of relations,” he added.

“I will not intentionally answer your question whether the Belgian model is applicable to Kosovo, it is up to Mr Lajčák and all partners in the dialogue to decide, but I can say that some elements may be interesting to consider”, the ambassador also said.

Ukraine’s Ambassador to Tirana speaks on war, Albania, and Kosovo (Exit)

While Ukraine acknowledges Kosovo for its support over the crisis with Russia, recognition is not on the table for now, according to the country’s ambassador to Albania, Volodymyr Shkurov.

In an interview given to Euronews, Shkurov, who has recently assumed his position, said, “we are aware of the support expressed by Kosovo officials…Ukraine is still in the study phase of the issue of recognition of Kosovo. At present, Ukraine has not made a final decision.”

He explained that the situation is complicated by the general political situation, including those in Crimea.

“I can say that these are not the same topic, but at the general political level, they are also perceived emotionally. Therefore, I think that against the background of the current escalation and political climate in Ukraine, the issue of Kosovo will be considered later.

He added that it is not on the agenda because researchers and those making decisions need to do their work, thus making it easier to conclude.

Montenegro’s pro-Serbian governing coalition collapses (AP)

Montenegro’s conservative pro-Serbian governing coalition collapsed Friday amid internal disputes, after parliament backed a no-confidence motion tabled by a junior coalition partner.

Lawmakers voted 43-11 in favor of the motion against Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapic’s government following weeks of political deadlock. Other lawmakers in the 81-seat parliament either abstained or left the session before the vote.

Krikokapic, a university professor who is close to the Serbian Orthodox Church, has headed an ideologically-mixed coalition that included pro-Serbian groups — as well as smaller parties which are not happy with the pace of reforms needed for the small country’s bid to join the European Union.

Friday’s vote came less than two years after Krikokapic’ coalition came to power, replacing a long-ruling pro-Western party.

Read more at: https://bit.ly/3HzLgBE