Selimi: Everything in Kosovo belongs to Kosovo (Blic)
Kosovo Deputy Foreign Minister Petrit Selimi in a talk show “Slobodno Srpski” said that Trepca Complex will not be the topic of the Brussels talks. "According to the Ahtisaari plan everything in Kosovo belongs to Kosovo. Kosovo ownership can only be discussed by the people who live in Kosovo, not Belgrade. With Belgrade we can talk about the debt - what Kosovo owes to Belgrade and vice versa," Selimi said.
Speaking about the Agreement on judiciary recently signed in the Brussels by prime ministers Isa Mustafa and Aleksandar Vucic, Selimi said that the essence of the agreement is that Kosovo “established constitutional and legal sovereignty over the entire territory of Kosovo when it comes to justice.”
Selimi said that Kosovo government does not expect any problems when it comes to the implementation of this agreement in the north. "The Prime Minister Vucic has negotiated on behalf of Serbia to withdraw Serbian parallel institutions that existed in Kosovo. We don’t negotiate on Kosovo. Kosovo is finished story since 2008. We talk how Serbia will abolish parallel institutions, and that's the whole purpose of the Brussels Agreement," Selimi said.
When it comes to illegal immigrants from Kosovo, he explained that the allegations of certain media that only in January tens or hundreds of thousands of Albanians left Kosovo are not true. As he said 11,000 people left Kosovo. However, he added that the responsibility for this lies with the government of Kosovo, which perhaps realized what was happening too late.
People from Kosovo, as he said, are leaving because of the same reason as people from Serbia or Greece, which is economic crisis. "The agreement on freedom of movement between Kosovo and Serbia also influenced the emigration. Now people can go to Western European countries in much easier way and it is much cheaper to go illegally, then legally with visa," Selimi said.
He pointed out that "what is important is that the number of people who left Kosovo in January this year was 11,000 and not 200,000 as some opposition politicians said, or 100,000 as some Serbian and Kosovo media reported".