Despite frequent pressure from the West on Pristina to pass the decision on creation of a special court of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) war crimes, and friendly warnings that such decision would be in the interest of Kosovo authorities in order to avoid creation of a new Hague tribunal by the UN, there is still no majority in the Kosovo Assembly to vote for it. Analysts in Kosovo believe that, in the end, the court will be established despite opposition of the great number of MPs in the Kosovo Assembly.
Web portal ‘Kosovainfo’ reported that Ambassador of the Great Britain to Kosovo Ian Cliff said that if Kosovo Assembly doesn’t pass the decision on creation of the special court than the issue will be handed over without delays to the United Nations Security Council in line with the UNSC Resolution 1244. He further said that there would be no need for bigger pressure in order that UN forms the court since UNSC permanent members, including Great Britain, won’t refuse to establish the court.
Kosovo analyst Fatmir Sheholli said he is quite skeptical that needed majority of 81 MP could be provided at this moment. “In case that Kosovo Assembly doesn’t pass the decision, we’ll face special court of a higher level, that is, Hague tribunal. That would mean that many things will be challenging for Kosovo,” said Sheholli and added that in such case Kosovo would face many problems, such as further recognitions of independence and visa liberalization. According to Sheholli some kind of model for adoption of a decision has to be found until the end of April.
The chairperson of the Serbian parliament’s Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun doesn’t see a reason for Kosovo to fear creation of another Hague tribunal. “Why would they oppose to the creation of the Hague tribunal when existing one has twisted the truth? They can only cheer to such tribunal that acquitted Ramush Haradinaj,” argues Drecun.
He fears that special court is a sort of trap that Serbia can’t escape. “It seems to me that we could come to situation that small number of KLA members are sentenced, while in parallel there would be new indictments raised here in Belgrade by the war crimes prosecutor and the one in Kosovo against Serbs, like the ongoing one. Pressure of the West leads me to suspect that entire story has been invented in order to wash down KLA and in order to show that Kosovo has made crucial step toward progress. I fear that conclusion will be that there were individuals who committed crimes, however that it was not about a massive policy, even though that was the exact goal of the KLA,” warned Drecun.
He wonders how comes that the US ambassador to Kosovo knows that there will be about dozen of cases, as she stated recently. “Ten is really too little for what happened in Kosovo, but there are protected ones, like Hashim Thaci. I am afraid that we’ll end up in situation that the court starts processing some Serbs, and not only Albanians,” said Drecun and asked how comes that no one mentions Dick Marty any more, based on whose report all this is done.
