Kurti says many Serbs agree, but do not publicly accept

Albin Kurti, chairman of the Vetevendosje Movement, has remained during yesterday's day in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He paid tribute to the tomb of Alija Izetbegovic and to the monument of 1,601 children killed in Sarajevo, Kosovo reports.

The complete scripture published by Kurti himself is found below.

Albin Kurti, head of Kosovo's Social Democratist Vetevendosje movement, won the largest number of individual votes in last year's elections, which the government also brittle in that country poses a serious threat. The Tyrania he experienced in his skin was a great help in the political roasting, while the political and economic programs he offered citizens to gain their trust.

Kurti, in this case HINA Business Forum in Sarajevo, arrived by plane from Budapest, thanks to the citizenship and documents of the Republic of Albania. Because, as he described, the absurd obstacles Kosovo has set up for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as a citizen of Kosovo, limit it from freedom of movement in BiH, which poses a problem for trade co-operation. However, Kurt is pleased when he comes to Sarajevo, where he is also a welcome guest.

“I have dual citizenship of Kosovo and Albania. In this case, I have used Albanian citizenship. When I came to Srebrenica two years ago, I had used a Kosovo diplomatic passport. Then I received a visa for only five days at the BiH Embassy in Skopje. Ambassador Lepa Babic was not happy that I was going to Srebrenica. I wasn't hoping to get a visa. Perhaps they estimated that the damage is smaller if they gave me a visa than the information that the visa was not given to me, he said at the beginning of the conversation.

In the course of the Klx conversation. ba Kurti tells of Russian Federation Federal Assembly Council President Valentina Matvienko Bosnia and Herzegovina's visit on relations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo, Kosovo's achievements in external plans and internal failures, to the government and the opposition, to its programmes and parallel system in Kosovo, as well as other topics.

Kurti, in some way you have visited Bosnia and Herzegovina at the same time as Russian Federal Assembly Council President Valentina Matvidenko. I assume you are aware of its position on the highest legal body in Bosnia and Herzegovina. How do you view her talk, and how are you generally watching her visit?

She attacked Bosnia and Herzegovina by saying something very problematic. Not only is this false when it comes to the past but it is very harmful when it comes to the future. With the qualifications that a civil war has occurred in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it wants Belgrade to be released from guilt. We know very well, among other things, according to information provided by the Nataša Kandiić Humanitarian Law Centre, that close to 4,000 APJ officers from Serbia fought against Bosniaks. These officers learned their war skills in Belgrade. Serbs who also fought were equipped with uniforms, weapons and strategies from Belgrade. They were not mere civilians whose aggression is marked as a civil war. Her sentence is very problematic.

I think that Bosniaks, as well as Albanians, should be much more active and vocal in exposing Serbian and Russian claims. I don't think we're co-ordinated enough and we're not active enough, thinking that the public in the world knows about our sufferings and that we shouldn't tell about them. In literature you must not repeat, but in politics you must repeat yourself. And, in particular, this should be done by Bosnian and Albanian politicians. We must repeat our truth as Belgrade repeats his lies.

Is not the truth enough? Why repeat it?

Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina are the two countries whose people suffered most during the former Yugoslavia, and unfortunately they have similar problems to this day. These problems mainly arise from Serbia, which is official Belgrade, which has Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which wants such a small Republic of Serbia in Kosovo as well.

Let's move on to relations between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. On one side, we have a lack of recognition for Kosovo and on the other, limited freedom of movement. Is there any possibility of progress in bilateral co-operation?

Bosnia and Herzegovina does not recognise Kosovo's independence, but I know Sarajevo is not guilty, but Republika Srpska, which abuses veto. I think it is not fair that the Kosovo Foreign Ministry has imposed reciprocity with Bosnia and Herzegovina, because only Bosniaks are being punished.

Serbs and Croats living in Bosnia and Herzegovina also have other documents and they travel freely to the Republic of Kosovo. Therefore, I believe Kosovo should impose reciprocity with Serbia, not with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sarajevo fought against Serbia and Pristina fought against Serbia. We don't, nor should we have problems with each other.

There are many areas in which we can co-operate, both in politics and economy, in culture, tourism and so on. I think it is now an excellent opportunity to talk about it and meet with politicians and activists from Bosnia and Herzegovina to build as many bridges as possible between the Republic of Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Let us return to the visa regime briefly. What is really the biggest problem, and will you use this visit to try to change something?

The problem of not recognising our independence is Bosnia and Herzegovina's problem. We regret Bosnia and Herzegovina does not recognise Kosovo, but I also think freedom of movement should not be violated by creating a formal and harmful reciprocity with Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I talked about this with the Albanian community in Sarajevo yesterday, and today I will be at the Sarajevo Business Forum, where I will have additional opportunities to meet with various politicians, including Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic, to consider the ways in which we have better co-operation.

You have to understand that we are still the opposition in Kosovo, we are not in power and we have many major problems with authority in Kosovo. One of these problems is this absurd obstacle that Kosovo has set for Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are unable to change this until we achieve power.

Kosovo declared its independence ten years ago, which Serbia has never officially recognised. How would you characterise the current situation in Kosovo, and what is its future prospects?

Now we had the 10th anniversary of our declaration of independence. Our success as a state is mainly in the external recognitions we've received over the years. A total of 115 states have recognised Kosovo. When it comes to internal consolidation, there is no major movement. Mitrovica remains a divided city. Social misery is a normal phenomenon among the population.

We need reciprocity with Serbia, uniting the town of Mitrovica and we need to fight unemployment, especially for young people and women, regardless of their nationality. I don't think a country is poor because of the excess of people's history, the lack of culture of society, nor because of its natural resources, whether it has them or not. Poverty is the result of the wrong economic model. With the economic model we have in Kosovo, we would also poor Switzerland and Germany, that you leave it alone.

That is why we need another economic model that will accept that finance, trade and services are very important branches of the economy, but production is even more important than them. So local products must be grown: agricultural, artisanal and industrial products. We have a terrible trade deficit that is so big, as far as the number is concerned, about a third of the gross domestic product. The ratio between imports and exports is 10 to 1. This fragile social peace that exists in Kosovo is largely due to our diaspora. Every third Kosovo citizen is not a resident of Kosovo. Our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, who are in Western Europe or in the United States, send about 1 billion euros annually to Kosovo. But it's like a table tennis ball that just comes out.

Our diaspora money should be not only a social factor for survival, but also an economic factor for development. Perhaps the Irish, Greek or Armenian diaspora sends more money home, but not in the report one with the state budget. One billion euros are provided by the diaspora until Kosovo's budget is only two billion.

How will representatives of the Vetevendosje Movement move according to the problems cited?

We, as a social democrat movement, the centre-left movement, consider that we should have a sovereign fund and that we must stop neoliberal privatisation. We would do that by drawing social companies from the Privatisation Agency and also attracting public enterprises from the Government of Kosovo. Together we will restructure in this sovereign fund and give our diaspora the opportunity to buy shares there. And not this brutal privatization, where we sell freely to everyone we have. In principle, I'm not absolutely against privatisation, but I think we should talk a lot before we sell something. We need to think carefully about why we privatize, like, what, when, and where we sell them. These are legitimate questions that are taboo themes in Kosovo.

The Sovereign Fund would allow our pension fund to buy shares and leave money in Kosovo. Kosovo's pension fund is 1.6 billion euros. A high percentage, exactly 97 percent of this fund, has been invested abroad. Each prime minister after the war and every post-war finance and economy minister requires foreign direct investment. But we send our money out. We also have a 600m-euro privatisation fund, which is also abroad. We have to connect those funds to the sovereign fund that would directly connect to our country.

In parallel with the fund we have to have a development investment bank, where the interest will be lower than 3% and the returns deadlines for many years. Not as is the case today, where small businesses go bankrupt. You can't sell the house to open the store. You must have access to capital. Such ones in Kosovo do not, because we have only private banks.

With this platform I competed in elections and doubled our vote. These other parties joined us and are now in power. Now they constitute a minority government. They have only 52 deputies from a total of 120 countries, as the Serbian list came out of the government. Indeed, it has not left the ministries, they have their ministries, but they do not attend government meetings. This is something of secondary importance.

Any situation, however bad, is appropriate for someone. Someone benefits here or this situation won't stay. Everyone says the situation is bad, but why is it taking longer? Because someone has a profit from it. We have a government with its businessmen. We agree that the government will be close to business and businesspeople to help them, but they cannot be so close in the sense that the prime minister or minister knows the details of certain companies. These are businessmen from the royal court. We don't need such businessmen, because then there's no development. Development and democracy must be together.

How do your programs, which you have partially affected among the Serb population in Kosovo, affect?

Serbs in Kosovo are afraid of Belgrade's parallel structures in Kosovo, especially after Oliver Ivanov's murder. We do not know what Serbs in Kosovo think, as long as they have parallel structures on their heads. We are unable to hear the authentic voice of Serbs from Kosovo. Serbs from Kosovo are not afraid of Albanians, they are afraid of Serbia. Many of them say privately they agree with me, but they cannot say so publicly, because Belgrade knocks at the door immediately.

Vučić continues the course of Miloševic in the sense that to him a Serb in Kosovo is not the one who has a Serb national consciousness or speaks Serbianly and has Serbia's culture and tradition, but to him is a Serb who is loyal to him. So. Being Serbian in Kosovo is a matter of loyalty to Belgrade, not relevant national issues. I think this is a violation of human and citizen rights.

We want Belgrade to be as far away from Kosovo as it has been from Belgrade, the better the relations between Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, and the closer Kosovo is to Belgrade, relations get worse.