TIRANA – Albania’s PM Edi Rama ended his two-day visit to Kosovo with a press conference at Pristina International Airport on Tuesday during which he considered the indictment against Kosovo President Hashim Thaci and senior politician Kadri Veseli as an attack on the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and Kosovo.
Rama met with several of Kosovo’s high officials and most political parties to discuss the situation in the country following the publication of the Special Prosecution’s announcement.
“For me, the communiqué that announced to the world that an indictment is expected to come, which has not been formalised by the court, is not only a flagrant violation of any good practice of international justice but also a brutal act against Kosovo itself,” Rama said in the press conference.
Rama also said that the indictment against Thaci and Veseli as suspects in crimes against humanity and war crimes has sparked a crisis and called for unity in “this national test” as he described it. In the meantime he said the announcement was “a violation of human rights” against the president of a country which “exists due to a liberation war” waged by the KLA, of which Thaci was a leader.
Rama indirectly agreed with Thaci’s comments on Monday, when the Kosovo president accused the international community of applying double standards to trying war crimes suspects from Serbia and Kosovo.
Albanian PM said that the timing of the publication of the Prosecutor’s announcement “is a reason to say that the history of this special court began with an act that aborted a political process related to peace.”
Thaci said on Monday that if the war crimes indictment is confirmed, he will resign as president. He already announced earlier this month that he will no longer be involved in politics once his mandate ends in April next year.
It is reported that former Kosovo PM Ramush Haradinaj refused to meet Edi Rama in Pristina because the Albanian premier filed a defamation lawsuit against him in January. Rama was suing Haradinaj over claims that the Albanian leader and other Balkan leaders had a plan to steal 10 billion euros from a mining complex.
But Rama said on Tuesday that the suit will be withdrawn. He said that Haradinaj, a wartime KLA commander, was “a historic figure… despite how bad a prime minister he was”.
In a comment on the future of Pristina-Belgrade dialogue Rama said that the dialogue with Serbia should continue, and argued that Kosovo should become part of a Balkan ‘mini-Schengen’ passport-free zone, which would involve free movement of people, goods, capital, and services within the region. The leaders of Serbia, Albania and North Macedonia backed the idea in October 2019.
“In this process, we must not forget that we are at peace and the lanes are divided for the treatment of war crimes and other aspects, the neighbor does not choose. We do not elect the President of Serbia, but we choose the strategic interest. Balkan Schengen is a strategic interest of Albanians. Through the Balkan Schengen, all countries have common entrances and exits,” he said./argumentum.al
