Bukoshi: Albin Kurti's greatest enemy is Albin Kurti prior to victory, the one who did not recognise the Republic and independence

Mr. Bukoshi spoke to the editor of Theme Mero Base 

Mr. Bukoshi, the Kosovo government is facing the international community's mounting pressure to reach a final agreement with Serbia. The hesitations are clear, as are the international community's warnings. Would you like to be in Albin Kurt's position right now?  
I don't know if I'd like to be in his position, because I've been out of all feeling at the political posts, but I know when we started this job, we've been on the other side of the barricade. It was us who prayed to the international community to open our doors, to wait for us, to hear us explain what Kosovo was and what our project and vision were.
In the late 1980s, Kosovo was an embarrassment to international diplomacy. She even tried to hear us. In the 1990s when we tried to impose ourselves on our political self-organization, we had a wall of indifference to grieve and break because of our resistance and, of course, because of Serbia's bloody crimes in the Balkans. Even today, I am overwhelmed by his sadness over our inadequacy at the time, but he also makes me proud to face those challenges.
Now it is easy to act as if we have the fate of the US or the European Union in the Balkans. But it's hard and wrong not to pray to do this to a country that's alive thanks to the West. In this respect, saying this, I think that Kosovo's prime minister should respect the history of its statehood and not behave as if Kosovo is a country that was established not two full years ago when it came to power. The story does not start from scratch every time someone becomes prime minister in this country. I know similar phenomena have had ahead of us, but to pretend today that this is the best government in the Balkans, is to dream in the sun, or make Mynhausen...
-Are you aware of the recent deal offer by the German side supported by the United States? 
- No, I'm not aware, but I can imagine it's one of those international community attempts to create climate confidence in signing a final agreement. What the Kosovo government has to do is strip off the populist demagogia and be transparent with the public by saying what's in favour and what Kosovo doesn't have in favor at this moment, so as “is crying and where the zarari”... Those who are currently in charge should not behave like people who are born just to win. They have to act like people who are fighting, and when you fight, you can get something. You may lose a battle, but you can lose the war.
Look at Serbia on the other side. He's got the opposite attitude. They scream and scream like you beat the dog, like “o style, we're done”, as if they're destroying it with the offered deal, or actually not so bad at that deal. But in the final, it manages the response and adapts to the agreement.
An elderly villager of mine, with no faculty, or master accomplished, told me: Don't trust my son to believe his escape that he failed even when he got under your belt and broke his neck, he screams and shouts “help me out of my shipkeeper”. Our politicians and rulers behave as if they were born to win not only over Serbia, but also over the European Union and the United States of America. That I extended my answer a bit...
)The fact that Kurt has an empty field from his strong opponents in The Hague affects the situation. ?  
Kurt does not have the battle with Albanians. It has with Serbia and herculian work to convince the international community. Albanians have given him a mandate to complete this job. He cannot abuse the fact that he has no strong opponents. His greatest enemy is now former Albin Kurti alone. One who did not recognise the Republic, independence, and international agreements in Kosovo. Now this Albin Kurti prime minister must kill “first Albin Kurtin the opposition and then think of how he defeats other opponents. And it's not that easy to kill yourself. And she wants some manhood.
- Do you believe that the establishment of the Special Court and the two-year call to The Hague of leading KLA leaders has been politically calculated to create this situation?
I don't think justice comes from political schemes. I don't want to think about that. Much more a justice for which it has been invested in the West by hundreds of millions of euros from its taxpayers.
But, I think the habitality of this situation with Kosovo Albanian leaders held at The Hague is perhaps worse. They have been held in prison for two years without the charges being filed. They could be free in Kosovo, while none of Kosovo's leaders have fled from justice. Kosovo is the only country in the Balkans, which has no leaders who are hiding from international and local justice, as Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia has had, and especially Serbia. And in this respect they could expect to set the charge in court in freedom.
Arresting two years ago and keeping in The Hague is like an ugly mix of Western bureaucracy, the political appetites of those who set up a court based on a fake and idiotic report like Dick Marty's and beyond and some knives behind his back (which someone once mentioned with pleasure) by Kosovo politics. It is clear that the political garrison, and especially that of Kosovo, has now spoken in their ears what the Special Court has wanted to hear by presenting Hashim Thaci and others as dangerous people to stay free in Kosovo.
What's wrong with the Special Court in this case?
- I'm not against the Special Court. In a way we took the job to the Special Court, with the absence of an effective justice in Kosovo. But in this case, the Special Court is acting like the Special Forces that kidnap four people are put in jail and then ask what they did. There are irrational behaviour at this point that is apparently caused by many local and international factors. I disagree with the fact that they had to be held in prison yet without a clear charge.
- A Do you know what charges will be brought against them?  
- No. I have no contact with them. And that's not how I had a friendship with them. But the fact that they judge them as KLA political domes in an attempt to call them U n CK as a criminal group is a bad and dangerous approach that has nothing to do with truth or history. The KLA was not a criminal group and they were not really the controllers or full-powerful KLA leaders. COLRISMARY KOSOVA was an Albanian reaction to extending the peaceful resolution of the crisis to end the regime of Nazi Serbia in Kosovo.
The KLA did not create either Hashim Thaci or those at The Hague. They tried to organize it and give it a political shield. But the KLA was born spontaneously in every village of Kosovo burning, in every house where there was a crime, and in every city that had a confrontation with violence. We as Kosovo government tried to control it KLA and put it under our political shield, no tricks, but we couldn't. It wasn't an idea of ours and it couldn't be under our control. It was a popular reaction.
Hashim Thaci and his associates achieved more effectively to be its popular people, but not people who could control everything there. It was essentially a decentralised organisation that had its idols, but not its only commander.
)There are also reportedly direct accusations of political elimination. Are you aware?   
- I don't know about any concrete charges. The truth is there are tensions and clashes up to the killing in the first few years after the liberation, but this is the result of our political culture, shortcomings in mutual tolerance and the standard of a society that has full dark spots inside it. Fortunately, many of those events were investigated and responsible. This is an issue belonging to the courts of Kosovo according to the facts they have. They are in The Hague with more evidence of Serbian police officers than of Albanians.
Finally, I beg you very much, where are those famous trafficked organs, on the priority charge that Kosovo is imprisoned with at The Hague? Can anybody answer me that I've been through kidney transplants at Steglitz Clinic in Berlin in 1984?
Where are those yellow house transplantologists where the bear takes the mail?
The Albanian state (laterly) is raising this question and doing well.
-Because you mention the problems you've had with KLA leaders during the war and contradictions with them, how you remember creating the KLA and facing it, both politically and politically.  
- We have to agree on what was publicly called. The KLA of what the KLA was. Politically the KLA was called a group of about 100 people led by the Kosovo People's Movement, which appeared during the burial of a Kosovo Albanian teacher. They were a small political core and you cannot call them an army. You can call the units, you can call them a political cell or party, but not an army. The KLA was formed on the road by Serb violence and as a reaction to efforts to eliminate Albanians. This group naturally took advantage of its “licence” but never had control over it.
I myself immediately expressed my solidarity with the KLA. I thought in those circumstances self-defense and rebellion were necessary. I thought we should continue our political struggle, but with an armed arm. So it would be a policy of bullets.
Have you had meetings with KLA leaders at the time?
I had a meeting with members of the KLA General Staff in Tirana in 1998. I met with Hashim Thaci and his associates. My main issue at the meeting was as follows: conflict has erupted; I respect people who fight on the ground; now we have to join politically and militarily. I told them that we must now unite all resources for common purpose. So I offered them government money, professional officers and institutional support. We were supposed to have a common supreme headquarters and all the funds we had collected over the years could be used for their armed struggle.
At that time, The KLA had very brave village commanders who were about to sacrifice their lives for the war.
How did events develop after the failure of the agreement?
We decided to create a security force under the control of Kosovo institutions, but we made the decision to merge with them on the ground. So we ordered our forces to enter Kosovo with KLA emblems, thus testifying not only the reconciliation that the KLA was an army of people created from below, but the fact that it was not controlled by any strict authority. I knew that professional military officers were welcome from village commanders. It was the General Staff of The one with the reservations.
I ordered the Ministry of Defence to coordinate work with the KLA General Staff to send 30-40 professional military officers to enter Kosovo and join the KLA as soon as possible. Military officers were available to village commanders. It was important that professional military officers were not seen as taking the duties of village commanders who had begun the armed struggle. We allocated a budget to the Ministry of Defence and Minister Ahmet Krasniqi gave funding to the KLA's General Staff.
 -If the Special Court manages to file charges against Hashim Thaci and other political leaders, as authority responsible for KLA crimes, how close are they?  
Hashim Thaci may have been a man of authority, or as popular as Albanian says, but has not had the real authority and power to command everything that happened within what was called the KLA. It was the Albanian war against Serbia's armed formations.
Hashim Thaci and I were politicians struggling to bring this war under political control. But neither I nor Ibrahim Rugova nor anyone else had the authority and the power to control what happened. It's another thing to be popular because of commitment to the top of a political movement and another thing to be able to have the authority to control this movement. Hashim Thaci has not. Not those others. I didn't have it on the institutional side either.
We've seen some high-level politicians visit The Hague. He's almost back on pilgrimage. Your comment? 
- I know, I've seen them. It is human that someone who lacks Hashim Thaci or others go to meet him. But when visits are made as a political gesture, I don't think it's very helpful to those who are there.
I understand why that happens. There is also a kind of reaction to the often wicked attitude that keep Kosovo institutions or political officials secret against them, presenting them as dangerous people in Kosovo. That, of course, has politicised the situation and now we're in front of this show.
They need to be helped by the state of Kosovo with facts dismissing the accusations and by Kosovo diplomacy on the right track. From Albania's diplomacy as well.

-You recently have a comment about the recent strain on the plates that Kurt's government seems determined not to let go, even though the West is trying to postpone that deadline? 

Did some friends ask me if Kurt refuses to extend the schedule for the license plates? I also told them “and also push it to sing”, according to a familiar annex in Kosovo.
The late Rugova would often tell me: hook up with the strong and listen, otherwise you wouldn't shut...
If what I'm saying to you may seem to be bullshit or folklore, I can tell you point after: Maintaining Kosovo's state identity is of great importance. But that is not a one-day battle. Of greater importance than that is the preservation of the alliance with the West, with the US and the European Union, which are long-term guarantees of Kosovo's state identity. That's the big battle. These small battles can make you popular with your militants but leave no trace of the history of the state. Big politicians are those who fall into their hands to make tough deals. Not making deals is the easiest thing. But that doesn't make you a winner. That in many cases is more like desertion.