27 minutes agoVjosa Osmani for Financial Times: Beden knows the truth about Kosovo, will help us
Periskopi(6 years ago)
(6 years ago)Kosovo's chief prime minister, Vjosa Osmani, has spoken for the first time in an international media as the manager of the president's office. In an interview for the English newspaper, the Financial Times, Osmani has said he expects to improve reports with the US with the election of Joe Biden as president. Osmani said American support was on [...]
Osmani has said that American support was questioned under Trump administration.
“Everyone knows that elected President Beden is not only some Kosovo friend”, Vjosa Osmani for FT said, referring to Biden's long support for intervention and dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo “He knows our pain very well”, she said.
Osmani took on the role of acting president in early November after her predecessor, Hashim Thaci, resigned to face war crimes charges filed by a special Hague-based court, writes “Financial Times”.
After a brutal war that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, the US has long played a key role in relations between Serbia and Kosovo. While Trump sought to engage, some saw his interventions as the service of close US economic and political interests, the article said.
“Joe Biden knows the truth and the truth is very simple and clear”, Osmani said. Serbia lost Kosovo because it abused the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity to kill people who lived in that territory to commit genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. He knows the truth and will not try to change it”.
As US senator, Biden was a vocal advocate of American intervention in the 1998-99 Kosovo war, in which the Kosovo Liberation Army held a guerrilla uprising against Slobodan Milosevic's loyal forces. But while most of the crimes were committed by Serbian forces, war crimes charges have also followed KLA members, many of whom moved to politics.
The expected approach of a future Biden administration contrasts with the administration's efforts Trump to broker a quick deal between Kosovo and Serbia leaders.
However, instead of placing bilateral disputes between Belgrade and Pristina in the centre, the focus of the agreements was on US foreign policy priorities, such as recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and promising not to grant 5G licenses to unbelievable “” ) is widely believed to be an aludium for the Chinese technology company, Huawei.
In the spring, Washington encouraged the collapse of a government in Kosovo because its prime minister was not interested in running negotiations with Serbia, being driven by the Trump administration. And in September, after a change in government in Pristina, Donald Trump hosted Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq and Kosovo Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti at the White House, where both sides agreed to improve economic relations, writes FT.
However, this agreement cannot be implemented. “We cannot move forward. . . without looking at the position of the new administration at those” points, Osmani said, referring to the provisions of the deal for the Lake of Weman and “mini-Shengin”.
Referring to Thaci's resignation, Osmani said Kosovo has shown “institutional challenge” and “extraordinary wills to co-operate with justice”.
Prosecutors claim Thaci, as a commander of the KLA guerrilla, and others around him were responsible for nearly 100 murders, including minority Serbs, Catholics and Roma, as well as political opponents, during and immediately after the war. Last Monday, Thaci was acquitted of 10 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Thaci is Albanian. The Hague-based court, which is part of Kosovo's judicial system but fully staffed by internationals because of fears of witness protection, is controversial in the small Balkan country of 1.8 million people, because it focuses solely on crimes committed by Albanians, who today make up about 90% of the population. However, most people who died in the war were Albanians.
The incident was announced in June, while Thaci was travelling to a meeting scheduled for the White House with his Serbian counterpart, Vuciq, and was confirmed by a judge in November.
Osmani said there can be no “any moral equivalence” between alleged crimes committed by several Albanian individuals and Serbia's “state-run”). She said previous judicial efforts to urge Serbian military and political leaders to render account for wars on the territory of the former Yugoslavia had not lasted long.
