Trepca miners’ strike suspended (dailies)
All dailies report that workers at the Trepca mine suspended their strike on Thursday after heavy pressure from representatives of Kosovo institutions. The miners decided to give the Kosovo government one month to adopt a law that would transform the Trepca mining complex into a public enterprise. Mitrovica Mayor Agim Bahtiri asked the miners on Thursday to trust Kosovo institutions. “State institutions will make decisions that are in the interests of the miners and the people, but they should be given time to accomplish this,” Bahtiri said.
Kerry: We destroyed ISIS cells in Kosovo (dailies)
United States Secretary of State John Kerry, while calling on states to join the coalition against terrorism, cited Kosovo as one of the locations where an Islamic State (ISIS) network had been broken up. Kerry said, “Foreign fighter networks have been broken up in Austria, Malaysia, Kosovo, and in other countries, foreign fighters have been prosecuted in Germany, Australia and the UK.”
EU experts say Kosovo threatened by terrorism (Koha)
In a front-page story, the paper reports that European anti-terrorism experts are focused on Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Sandjak region between Serbia and Montenegro, as they believe that a large number of radicalized youths from these areas have decided to join terrorists fighting in Syria and Iraq. An unnamed senior EU official said that there has been an increase in religious radicalism and that over 500 youths from these areas have been recruited to fight in Syria and Iraq. At the same time, the official added that the majority of the population does not support such radicalism and the authorities are actively fighting against terrorism and extremism and cooperating with security authorities from EU member states.
Dacic calls for Pristina meeting to be status-neutral (Kosova Sot)
Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic is expected to take part in March in a meeting of regional ministers in Pristina that will be hosted by Kosovo Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci. Serbian authorities want the meeting to be neutral with respect to Kosovo’s status and not to display any state symbols. Dacic said he would present these conditions in the upcoming Pristina-Belgrade talks in Brussels.
“Parliament doesn’t make good decisions for Kosovo” (Zeri)
Jakup Krasniqi, the former Speaker of the Kosovo Parliament and member of the Initiative for Kosovo (NISMA), said on Thursday that he does not have any disagreements with NISMA leader Fatmir Limaj, as media had reported in the past few days. Krasniqi said that he gave up his MP post “as a sign of protest against the Kosovo Parliament’s inability to make good decisions for Kosovo.” Krasniqi said that NISMA cooperates with the other two opposition parties, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) and the Vetevendosje Movement. In regards to the special court, which would deal with war crimes allegations, Krasniqi said it should deal with post-conflict crimes and not crimes committed during the conflict, “because the Hague Tribunal has already dealt with those”.
