A long-term senior member and, until recently, deputy president of the party, the chairman of the Kosovo Assembly and former chief of the shadowy intelligence agency, the National Information Service, SHIK, is hardly a new player on the political scene.

While claims that he will reform the party have mostly been met with skepticism, it is now up to Veseli to decide whether his leadership will represent continuity, or be marked by changes.

For the first time since last September, when opposition parties in Kosovo began disrupting parliamentary sessions with canisters of tear gas, leaders of the five main parties took part in a joint round table organised by the EU.

The Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, as the new Kosovo war crimes court will be called, is still awaiting final approval from MPs in the Netherlands, where it will be based, and for its funding from the EU to arrive before it can start work, BIRN has learned.

The Kosovo and the Netherlands governments signed an agreement in January which enabled the court’s chambers and prosecutor’s office to be located in The Hague.

With a football in her hands, the Vice President of the European Parliament, Ulrike Lunacek, congratulated Kosovo on its admission into FIFA and UEFA, football's main international bodies, before going to say that now it's up to Kosovo if it wishes to secure visa liberalisation with the EU.

MP and former Kosovo Liberation Army commander, Fatmir Limaj, who is already on trial for war crimes, has been questioned by prosecutors in Pristina about another wartime case.