Vetevendosje attacks Hashim Thaci for Brussels agreements

Vetevendosje has attacked Hashim Thaci, saying these talks had started with Serbia at the moment when Kosovo was at the height of achievements as a state and as after them with such action Thaci had “ignored independence”. Also in that response, they say these talks had begun when no three months had passed since Dick Marty's report published.

In this response, the ruling party also mentions agreements on the Association of Serbian municipalities and also the letter former Prime Minister Thaci sent to him. NATO, where it vowed that the KSF would not go north with a similar decision and without co-operation with NATO and KFOR.

VV says this is the legacy left in the dialogue today's opposition and that already as a ruling party, it has to protect Kosovo from one-ethnic association.

At the end of the response, they say that between Kosovo and Serbia, only the status of reports has remained unsolved, and that to move forward, Kosovo and Serbia must know each other, as Joe Biden had written in his letter.

Full response:

On 9th anniversary of the Thaci deal Dachic

On March 8th 2011, the then government began political talks with Serbia, which it called technical talks. These talks began only three years after declaring independence, eight months after Kosovo's victory at the International Court of Justice ( DND, which sealed the legality of the declaration of independence, five months after the UN resolution calling for dialogue to promote co-operation, progress and improve people's lives, and not three months after the “found” Dick Marty Report.

This was the background when <x0-technical talks began with Serbia -- that is, at the height of achieving Kosovo's citizenship after the UN decision and a resolution calling for improved people's lives.

As part of the then opposition we have not only rejected political talks with Serbia, even passing a resolution on March 10th 2011 at the Kosovo Parliament, but we have also protested.

We have rejected not because we did not want any dialogue with Serbia on resolving unresolved issues, but because we did not want political negotiations on Kosovo's internal issues. Furthermore, these political talks, which were actually negotiations on domestic issues, were led by people of compromises with Serbia. They were without principles, without limitations, and without transparency.

Still without becoming a year from the start of the dialogue, on February 24th 2012, the first political agreement that tarnished Kosovo's independence even literally by placing independence on an introst. Fusnota evades independence by pushing UNMIK back 10 years now. We also protested against it and the people who brought it told us it was a snowpot that would melt at springtime.

A year after the damage to independence, on April 19th 2013, the then government signed the agreement for the Association of Serb Majority Communities (“Zajednica”), thus negotiating Kosovo's north with Serbia and seriously violating the country's constitution, multiethnic character and ethnic decentralisation of each had defended it with much zeal.

The April 19th 2013 agreement violates in its entire multiethnic character of the constitution, but also the principle of local self-government, the organisation and competencies of municipalities, thus creating a new one-ethnic institution that is located on municipalities between central and local governments with the role of representative and organisational decision-making body only for Serb majority municipalities. In February, a attempted Republika Srpska within Kosovo.

As it did with many other harmful agreements, the PDK government then saw to it that this serious act of violating the country's constitution of sovereignty was replaced by “legalised” in the Kosovo parliament. In the midnight hours of April 21st, 2013, 89 MPs among them almost all the opposition AAK and LDK, who had voted two years earlier against the resolution for talks with Serbia, raised their hands to vote on the resolution supporting the single-ethnic association.

The April 19th agreement, which the first 6 articles have for “Zieednica”, is agreement to change the character of the state of Kosovo. Beyond “Zayednica”, it envisioned the creation of a set of parallel institutions for the Serb minority in Kosovo. Politically and organisationally, the agreement provided for the formation of ethnic association only for Serb municipalities, in terms of the judiciary, for the parallel appeals court, which they carried out, and in terms of security, police power was envisioned by appointing the regional commander only for the four Serb majority municipalities in the country's north.

When in December 2015, the Constitutional Court interpreted the August 25th 2015 agreement for the competencies of Association signed by the LDK and the PDK, stemming from the April 19th 2013 agreement, it issued the illegal and virtually uncompliable association because there is no room in the multiethnic constitution for one-ethnic bodies.

These were negotiations with Serbia without principles and without transparency, which did so much harm to Kosovo's independence, which had already been declared on numerous compromises with the Ahtisaari Pack.

This is also the legacy that left us behind in this dialogue: the former opposition protest against the Ahtisaari Pacos with ethnic decentralisation, today in the government we must protect Kosovo (with the entire Ahtisaari Pack) from single-ethnic association.

And if that wasn't enough for the worse that day, on April 19, 2013, former Prime Minister Thaci sent a letter to former NATO Secretary General Rasmussen, where he unilaterally pledged that the KSF would not cross the Iber River!

We must recall and recall that Kosovo's status is set on February 17th 2008 and that Kosovo is an independent and sovereign country. What is left unsolved is the status of relations between Kosovo and Serbia. It is evident that Kosovo and Serbia do not recognise each other, so mutual recognition is needed, even as United States President Joe Biden noted. This recognition should come from a principled and transparent dialogue between the equal parties, where, as defined in the UN resolution on the profitable dialogue, citizens should be.