Opposition cannot bring down the Government (Koha Ditore)

Assembly of Kosovo is not dominated by parties in power but neither is it dominated by the opposition. As a consequence, the latter cannot bring down the Government. LDK, Vetëvendosje and AAK together have 51 deputies, ten less than the minimal number of votes required to successfully pass the motion of mistrust of the Government.

There are 12 deputies that do not belong to any parliamentary group, however, according to the sources of the newspaper, only 4 or 5 of them would support such an initiative. The new position of AAK showed that the motion does not even have the support of the entire opposition, which rebutted its own deputy, Burim Ramadani, who said that AAK would vote for the motion.

Haradinaj: I am not as I was before (Zëri)

Leader of Alliance for Future of Kosovo Ramush Haradinaj said in an interview that he does not intend to give in on his demand for taking the position of prime minister and gave the Democratic Party of Kosovo several more days to consider his coalition offer.

“We have offers to stop this governance, to start a new one. There would also be people from the PDK but it would be a new government, a new government would begin and this is the offer we made,” said Haradinaj.

Asked whether his party would support a motion of mistrust for the Government, Haradinaj said they did not come out with a decision on this issue but that they are analyzing the recent events.

OSCE: A delicate situation in the Valley (Koha Ditore)

OSCE Commissioner for Minorities Knut Vollebaek during a visit to Preshevo said that the situation there is very serious and requires a special approach by the Government in Belgrade. “The population of the south of Serbia is going through many challenges,” Deutsche Welle quoted Vollebaek as saying. He added that he hoped Belgrade authorities will be willing to review the position of Albanians in this part of Serbia and that “if our help is needed for possible mediation, we will gladly accept it”.

Government allocates €100,000 for reparation of Serb cemetery in Vitia (Zëri)

Government of Kosovo has decided to allocate 97,000 euros for restoration of Serb cemeteries in Vitia after tens of tombstones were desecrated in the aftermath of UCPMB memorial’s removal from Preshevo.

“We will work in getting them back to their original state regardless of who damaged them,” said Deputy Prime Minister Hajredin Kuçi after the meeting of the Government. Kuçi said that if this amount of money will not be enough, the Government is ready to add more.  

Lirak Çelaj, head of PDK in Pristina (dailies)

Elections in the Democratic Party of Kosovo Pristina’s branch ended yesterday with Lirak Çelaj being elected head. Çelaj won over his counter-candidate, Memli Krasniqi, in the second round of voting as the first one ended in a tie. Çelaj said the next goal will be winning local elections in Pristina and said he believed the PDK has potential to become the leading party in the capital.

Veseli gets the most votes for the Steering Council (dailies)

Former head of Kosovo Intelligence Service (SHIK) Kadri Veseli has emerged as the most voted PDK official for the party’s Steering Council. Veseli won 581 votes out of the total of 657 votes of delegates. He is followed by Hajredin Kuçi with 497 votes while Fatmir Limaj, who did not attend the PDK convention but got proposed for the Council, got 473 votes and is in the top ten most voted officials. At the same time, Jakup Krasniqi received 366 votes and ended up in the thirty-eight position.

Surroi: The dialogue process with many uncertainties (dailies)

Head of the Board of the Foreign Policy Club, Veton Surroi, has assessed the process of the dialogue as a transfer from a status quo to a new situation. Surroi stated that the process of the dialogue has its positive sides but at the same time, there are many uncertainties. He stated at the roundtable organized by Foreign Policy Club on “Challenges of Kosovo’s Foreign Policy for 2013,” that many details on how will this process end are lacking.

“It would have been quite normal for a state to report through its own institutions. In the end, these are institutions that express the will of the population, as much as it can be expressed in a not very clear process of election,” said Surroi. “What is called normalization in this case? What will the parties consider normalization,” he asked further. He stated that the time required for normalization is also unknown.

Serbs in the north threaten with war if that part is integrated (Koha Ditore)

Serbs in the north protested on Wednesday in Mitrovica against the agreement reached in Brussels for customs and joint management of the border. In his address in front of 1,000 protesters, Slavisa Ristic, illegal major of Zubin Potok municipality, threatened with “war if it comes to the integration of the north of Kosovo in the so-called state of Kosovo.” The protest was organized under the patronage of the so-called leaders of the four municipalities in the north of Kosovo. “Our message for Albanians and all the others is that this is our land. We do not want war, but if we are forced, we will defend this land also by force,” said Ristic.

Limaj’s defence was paid with around €2 mill (Koha Ditore)

The paper writes that the court proceedings cost the PDK deputy leader and former minister of transport Fatmir Limaj around two million euro with one being spent on his defence counsel during the trial in ICTY and the other million going for his defence in the so-called Kleçka case. The Special Prosecution believes that one million has been secured through criminal activity and has filed an indictment on money laundering charges against two of Fatmir Limaj’s brothers, Demir and Florim.