KOSOVO IS seeking an early start to long-awaited talks with Serbia after the fledgling state’s parliament reappointed Hashim Thaci as prime minister and approved millionaire businessman Behgjet Pacolli as president.
The ruling coalition, based around parties led by Mr Thaci and Mr Pacolli, must create a negotiating team and prepare its positions for the EU-brokered talks with Belgrade, which were delayed by months of political turmoil and snap elections in Kosovo.
The task will be complicated by a looming investigation into claims the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), once led by Mr Thaci, was involved in abductions, murder and illegal organ-trafficking in 1999-2000, and by strong opposition to his alliance with the controversial Mr Pacolli.
“The government is ready for dialogue with Serbia but without touching on the status and the issue of territorial integrity of Kosovo,” Mr Thaci said yesterday, a day after parliament confirmed his second term as prime minister.
Mr Thaci’s new government excluded allies who have been accused of corruption and included a Kosovo Serb as deputy prime minister, after an unprecedented number of minority Serbs in the overwhelmingly ethnic-Albanian country defied Belgrade by voting in December’s election.
Serb parties and splinter groups helped to give the coalition a wafer- thin majority in parliament, but it is expected to come under severe strain over the organ-trafficking claims, the talks with Serbia and the rise to power of Mr Pacolli.
“Pacolli does not care about the interest of Kosovo, but for his own interest. He served Thaci politically and Thaci paid him back with public tenders,” said opposition MP Visar Imeri.
Often referred to as Kosovo’s richest man, Mr Pacolli is viewed with suspicion by many Kosovars due to his close links to Russia – a key Serb ally and opponent of Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence from Belgrade.
His Swiss-based construction firm refurbished the Kremlin in the late 1990s.
“This is scandalous,” said anti-corruption campaigner Avni Zogiani. “With this formula of governance, we shall be totally isolated from European countries. This president and prime minister represent the dark side of Kosovo.”
The UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague yesterday sentenced former Serb police general Vlastimir Djordjevic to 27 years in prison for crimes against humanity during the 1998-99 war in Kosovo.
