Kosovo government minister Dalibor Jevtic says Serbs and Albanians need to build trust - and that Kosovo Serb children should learn the Albanian language to ensure better communication for the future.

“The key word today in Kosovo is trust, which has to be built both between the two communities and towards [state] institutions,” Dalibor Jevtic, the Minister for Communities and Returns in the Kosovo government, told BIRN in an interview.

A draft strategy developed by the government says fighters coming back from the Middle East, as Islamic State collapses, pose the next major challenge to the country's security.

The Kosovo government’s new National Strategy against Terrorism and Action Plan 2018-2022 says fighters returning from conflict zones in the Middle East, as the so-called Islamic State, ISIS, collapses, are the next challenge in the country’s battle against the threat of terrorism.

By: Shkelzen Gashi

The new Special Court to try former Kosovo Liberation Army members for wartime and post-war crimes is not an attack on the struggle for independence, but an attempt to prosecute criminals.

The majority of people in Kosovo believe that the Special Court is an unfair creation, but the blame for its establishment, first and foremost, lies with us.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has published an e-book about the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, aiming to increase understanding about the newly-established court that will try ex-guerrillas for crimes during and after the war.

Mitrovica South Mayor Agim Bahtiri told BIRN that due partly to increased political tensions in the northern part of Kosovo, the reopening of the bridge that links the Albanian and the Serb-inhabited parts of the divided city of Mitrovica has been postponed to May. “Problems that arose from the construction of the wall have resulted in the delay. We expect the bridge to be opened in the first ten days of May,” Bahtiri said. Kosovo’s Minister for Dialogue, Edita Tahiri, said the process of reopening the bridge for pedestrians and vehicles is in its final phase.

United States of America have the largest and most expansive program of foreign aid in the world, with an annual budget of up to $ 50 billion.

More than 18 billion of the budget goes for the economic development, often called the humanitarian aid, while $ 8.1 billion goes for the help to strengthen the security.

Kosovo is the largest recipient of US aid in the Balkans. In 2016 this aid amounted to 30 million dollars.

In his first interview since appointed chief prosecutor of the new Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, David Schwendiman, told BIRN that suspected criminals are the target of his work, not the Kosovo Liberation Army. “I am not after organisations, I am not after ethnicities, I am looking at individual responsibility for what was done,” David Schwendiman said.

Montenegro’s Deputy Prime Minister, Dusko Marković, in a statement for BIRN has urged Kosovo to fulfill its part of the border-demarcation agreement without further delay. Marković expressed concern that while parliament in Montenegro ratified the agreement at the end of last year, Kosovo has yet to complete its part.

The Kosovo government has put forward a landmark proposal that will make it easier for Kosovo Serbs and members of other minority groups to apply for jobs in public institutions.

The deal involves Kosovo accepting the validity of diplomas issued by the country's Serbian-language university in the Serb-run far north of the country.

Formerly part of the bi-lingual University of Pristina, the country’s public university during Yugoslavia, Serbian language faculties moved from Pristina to the northern, Serb-run half of the divided town of Mitrovica in 1999.

Kosovo Serb leaders - currently boycotting the government - gathered on Wednesday in Gracanica to form a joint political umbrella, and produce a list of joint demands.

Kosovo Serb mayors and municipal assembly members from the country's Serb-majority municipalities filled the house of culture in the central town of Gracanica on Wednesday on a mission to coordinate future steps.