UK’s Foreign Office Minister for Human Rights and the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, Baroness Anelay during her visit to Kosovo will pledge £80,000 for the Kosovo Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture and its partners. According to a press release issued by the British Embassy in Pristina, these funds will support the valuable work the Centre is doing in helping survivors of sexual violence in conflict through rehabilitation and economic empowerment programmes.

UNESCO’s Executive Council will review Kosovo’s application for membership on 3 October. According to Kosovo’s Deputy Foreign Minister Petrit Selimi, Serbia will be unable to prevent Kosovo’s membership. “Legally, Kosovo is eligible to apply to UNESCO because two-thirds of votes are not necessary and there are many European countries that gained UNESCO membership before becoming members of the UN”, said Selimi in an interview for Radio Kosova.

The Basic Court in Pristina has issued a thirty-day detention period for five men arrested over the weekend on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. The court found that there is credible suspicion that Besnik Latifi, Enis Latifi, Milazim Haxhiaj, Gazmend Haliti and Fehmi Musa are responsible for planning terrorist acts in the territory of Kosovo.

Former Assembly Speaker and current head of the National Council at the Initiative for Kosovo (NISMA) political party, Jakup Krasniqi, stated that witnesses can be protected also in Kosovo and that this is not an essential reason to establish a special court. His statement came as a response to the announcement of the Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth that the special court has to establish being that witnesses are not protected in Kosovo.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare for implementation of a project aimed at decreasing unemployment in Kosovo. In connection to this, they will today launch the Wage Subsidy Programme that seeks to secure long-term employment opportunities for the people of Kosovo. The programme is jointly funded by the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, the UNDP and the Finnish Foreign Ministry.

Kosovo's Minister of Finance Avdullah Hoti had a meeting today with the new International Monetary Fund representative to Kosovo Ruud Vermeulen. Minister Hoti thanked the outgoing IMF official, Frank Lajkwik, for the support in preparing agreement between the IMF and Kosovo. At the same time, he wished Vermeulen success in his new post stressing that he hoped the IMF board would approve agreement with Kosovo. Hoti expressed the commitment of the Kosovo government to change a number of laws to create between conditions for doing business in Kosovo.

Chairman of the Kosovo government’s commission for missing persons Prenk Gjetaj had a meeting yesterday with the British Ambassador to Kosovo, Ruairi O’Connell and discussed the process of determining the fate of missing persons during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo. Gjetaj said the issue of missing persons should be treated with priority by the government of Kosovo while O’Connell expressed the readiness of his government to support Kosovo in the joint effort of determining the fate of missing persons.

The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Isa Mustafa, will meet his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, in Brussels tomorrow. The representatives of both governments said they are expecting positive results from the meeting. Valon Murtezaj, the advisor for foreign affairs to Prime Minister Mustafa, told RTK that Pristina will initially ask for the implementation of the agreements reached so far before moving on to other topics. “Then we will try to achieve progress in concrete areas such as the telecom, namely the telephone code, and also the energy.

Reconstruction of houses owned my Albanians in the Mitrovica’s northern neighbourhood of Kroi i Vitakut commenced this morning only to stop hours later. The neighbourhood representative Nazmi Ismajli said the residents agreed to temporarily suspend works until Tuesday when talks underway in Brussels end.

Analysts in Kosovo have repeatedly warned that the possible establishment of the special court by the UN would be damaging for Kosovo but Vetevendosje thinks differently. Its deputy leader Aida Derguti said in an interview for Radio Kosova that if the UN was to establish the court, this would produce two new developments.  “We believe it is impossible for the UN to establish the court for Kosovo because, to do so, a court would need to recognised the territory of Kosovo and its borders.