UNMIK Headlines 5 May
Serb MPs threaten to boycott assembly session on Monday (Koha)
Serb MPs are threatening to boycott the session of the Kosovo Assembly on Monday if the voting on the Kosovo Armed Forces (KAF) is not removed from the agenda. Serb MP Milivoje Stojanovic sent a request to Prime Minister Hashim Thaci to withdraw the proposed amendments for the transformation of the Kosovo Security Force into Armed Forces. Speaking on behalf of other Serb MPs, Stojanovic said they could even boycott the session. “We, the Serb MPs, have decided not to attend the assembly session and not vote on the creation of the army of Kosovo,” Stojanovic was quoted as saying. He also said he informed President Atifete Jahjaga last week about the position of Serb MPs.
Serbia preventing establishment of KAF (Tribuna)
On the front page, the paper reports that authorities in Belgrade, through officials from the Civic Initiative Srpska, have contacted Kosovo Serb MPs and promised them political posts in exchange for their opposition to the initiative for the establishment of Kosovo Armed Forces.
Kosovo Assembly is set to vote on the motion in today’s session but before that, political party leaders are expected to meet and discuss the issue. If Serb MPs are not convinced to give their support to the motion for establishment of KAF, the assembly session could be postponed, sources told the paper.
Moore: Decision about special court, difficult but right (Lajm)
Director of South-Central European Affairs in the US State Department Jonathan Moore expressed American support for inclusion of Kosovo in NATO’s Partnership for Peace programme. In an interview for Voice of America, Moore also said that Washington supports the transformation process of Kosovo Security Force into Kosovo Armed Forces but added that Kosovo cannot exceed its possibilities. Moore said that the decision for establishment of the special court in Kosovo was difficult but right.
Cliff: Work on special court is not over yet (Koha)
In a front-page interview for the paper, British Ambassador to Kosovo, Ian Cliff, says that after national elections and the formation of the new assembly, Kosovo authorities will need to make legal and constitutional amendments required for the establishment of the special court. Cliff said he was disappointed that national elections will be held without election reforms which have been promised for three years now. He said he does not expect dramatic changes in the approach of Kosovo institutions vis-à-vis dialogue with Belgrade and other issues, “unless Vetevendosje wins the elections”. Cliff also said he expects Kosovo Serbs to participate in the upcoming elections even if their request for extended reserved seats is not adopted.
ICTY interviewed Haradinaj before he became PM in 2004 (Zeri)
Former UNMIK chief Soren Jessen-Petersen wrote in the foreword of a book by Michael O’Reilly about Ramush Haradinaj that the AAK leader knew the ICTY was investigating his activity during the Kosovo conflict even before he became Prime Minister in 2004. Three months after his election, Haradinaj would resign after the ICTY accused him of war crimes. “My respect and support for the court [ICTY] grew somewhat weaker with time, especially due to the irresponsible behavior of Carla del Ponte,” Jessen-Petersen also writes. The Danish diplomat also said that “Carla del Ponte called on the United Nations Security Council not to recognize Kosovo’s independence as this would complicate her efforts to cooperate with Serbian authorities in handing over Serbs accused of war crimes”.
Russians also threaten in the North (Bota Sot)
The recent news about the presence of 12 Russian agents in the north of Kosovo, who are alleged to be trying to destabilize this part, has caused dilemmas and concerns. The information is considered to be accurate as it has not been denied by the institutions. Except from Serbia, Albanians in the north now also feel threatened by Russia. They wonder why these agents do not get arrested by the institutions being that there are grounded suspicions regarding their destabilizing activities.
“Russian presence in the North is not news. They have been present there earlier, be it with people or financially. Executive institutions are obliged to extend sovereignty and keep security of the country by applying laws and the Constitution,” said Ahmet Isufi, head of the Assembly Commission for Internal Affairs and Supervision of Kosovo Security Force.
Nearly 400,000 “fictive” voters can be used on election day (Koha)
Kosovo’s Ministry of Interior Affairs and the Central Election Committee (CEC) have failed to clean the voters’ list for the upcoming national elections, the paper reports on page three. “This process takes time, it is not easy to clean the whole list, but the situation now is much better than it was one or two years ago,” said Interior Minister Bajram Rexhepi. CEC officials on the other hand warn that on election day, the names of 400,000 persons who are either dead or abroad, can be misused.
Politics has criminalized privatization process (Zeri)
The paper reports on the front page that the recent arrests of former senior officials of the Privatization Agency of Kosovo (PAK) are confirming doubts that the privatization process in Kosovo was organized in criminal fashion.
Another Kosovar killed in Syria (Koha)
Another Kosovo Albanian man, whose identity is yet to be revealed, has been killed in the conflict in Syria after joining anti-Assad forces there. The victim was a resident of Luxembourg and had joined anti-government forces in Syria in 2013. The news was confirmed by the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The paper notes that only this month, 10 Albanians were killed in the Syrian conflict.