Some MPs argued that only former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters should get state benefits, while others insisted that other guerrillas who fought in the 1998-99 war should also receive assistance.
Edona Peci
BIRN
Pristina
The dispute erupted on Monday ahead of a parliamentary vote later this week on proposed new legislation granting benefits to those who fought for Kosovo’s independence against Serbian forces in the late 1990s.
Parliament chairman Jakup Krasniqi, the former secretary of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, insisted that “there were no political formations or military groups [apart from the KLA] during the war in Kosovo”.
“There was only one Kosovo Liberation Army and everything that happened, happened under its emblem,” he said.
But the opposition Kosovo Democratic League, LDK, founded by the country’s late President Ibrahim Rugova, recently added an amendment to the draft legislation which envisions rights and benefits for other fighters who were not officially part of the KLA.
The LDK insists the new legislation should include former members of the Kosovo Armed Forces of the Republic of Kosovo, a small-scale military outfit established in 1998 which acted under the authority of the self-proclaimed ‘Republic of Kosovo’ government led by Rugova.
Ismet Beqiri of the LDK said that “the [ruling] Kosovo Democratic Party and its leader [Prime Minister Hashim Thaci] wants to divide fighters into two groups”.
“This shows that, even 15 years after the war, they are not ready to accept certain phases of our history [during which we aimed] to achieve what we achieved,” he said.
The new legislation was initially approved earlier this month but sparked an intense debate amongst lawmakers, some of whom said it was unclear exactly how much veterans would be paid in benefits. Parliament is due to give its final approval in a vote on Thursday.
It is still not known exactly how many people actually fought for the KLA during the late 1990s conflict. In November 2012, the Kosovo government launched a project to verify exactly who was in the KLA but the count is not finished yet and no completion date has been set.
The delay in approving the law also sparked discontent among war veterans, who threatened mass protests if there was no vote in parliament this week.
