Forensic experts are hunting for evidence at a grave site in the Kosovo village of Rezalle, where 42 Albanians were allegedly killed by Serbian forces in April 1999.

Prenk Gjetaj, the chief of Kosovo’s missing persons commission, told BIRN that the search in the village of Rezalle in the Skenderaj/Srbice municipality of northern Kosovo was launched in the hope of finding evidence that will help identify bodies which later reburied in a hidden location in Serbia.

The Kosovo authorities and rights campaigners launched a national petition urging the United Nations to produce a report about rapes committed during the late 1990s conflict.

The authorities set up tents on Monday in towns across Kosovo, excluding Serb-majority areas, where people could sign the petition calling on the UN to finally establish the facts about rapes by Serbian fighters during the 1998-99 war.

Albanians and Serbs individed northern Kosovo are marking out their respectives territories by erecting rival monuments named after their respective heroes.

Ethnic Albanians have responded to the construction of a new "Tsar Lazar" square on the main bridge of the divided town of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo by erecting concrete constructions of their own.

A German parliamentary delegation has told Serbia it must implement the EU-led deal with Kosovo in full if it is to realise its EU accession hopes.

German parliamentarians, on a two-day visit to Serbia, have told the Belgrade government they want to more action on Kosovo before Serbia can further its aspirations to join the EU

A new square erected over the bridge in the divided northern town of Mitrovica, apparently designed to stop it reopening to traffic, has revived tensions between local Serbs and Albanians in the south.

Kosovo Serbs have begun building a square named after a medieval Serbian emperor on the bridge that separates the ethniclly and politically divided town in northern Kosovo.

Construction on the “Tsar Lazar” square began on Wednesday by the same construction company that removed the recently built “Peace Park” there.

A witness told the war crimes trial of former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Sylejman Selimi, who is now Kosovo’s ambassador to Tirana, that the defendant assaulted him several times.

The protected witness codenamed ‘Witness A’ testified on Tuesday that while he was held at the KLA’s detention centre in Likovc/Likovac in the autumn of 1998, Selimi accused him of collaborating with Serb forces and assaulted him.

“Hey you, Serbian spy, he called to me,” Witness A said.

Over a month after elections, the Kosovo parliament is due to convene next week, paving the way for a new government to be established after an opposition bid to rule was thwarted.

03 Jul 14

At a ceremony to mark the beginning of the construction of a highway connecting Pristina and Skopje, Kosovo and Macedonian officials said it would bring Albanians in both countries closer.

Pristina

03 Jul 14
Hashim Thaci’s ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo is convinced it will succeed in forming a new government, but it’s unclear how it will get the votes, with the opposition united against him.

Edona Peci, Nektar Zogiani
BIRN
Pristina

Thanks to Kosovo’s Constitutional Court, Hashim Thaci is assured that he will get the first chance at forming the next government – but the odds of success are stacked against him. The reason is simple: a group of opposition parties representing a majority in the next parliament has vowed to stop him.

30 Jun 14

The authorities will investigate two more locations near a mass grave in the Serbian town of Raska, where the remains of 50 Kosovo Albanians thought to have been killed in wartime were found.
Marija Ristic
BIRN
Belgrade