albin kurti, to cool it and quickly. will he listen? and if he doesn t, could kosovo see a new round of balkan bloodshed? prime minister albin kurti, welcome to hardtalk. welcome to pristina and thank you for having me. well, it s a great pleasure to be in your office. prime minister, how close has kosovo come to seeing a renewal of conflict in the last few months? it has been very heavy because the two extremist terrorist organisations, which are being financed by serbia, and from where they also receive their orders, civil protection and the northern brigade have been very active and first intimidating serbs and serbian candidate, who would like to vote and run in elections, and second, in attacking our police, journalists but, first and foremost, nato soldiers on 29 may. you ve chosen, in that answer, to pile all of the blame on your serbian minority population. that is not the way the international community sees things right now? i never blame serbian minority populati
well, it s a great pleasure to be in your office. prime minister, how close has kosovo come to seeing a renewal of conflict in the last few months? it has been very heavy because the two extremist terrorist organisations, which are being financed by serbia, and from where they also receive their orders, civil protection and the northern brigade have been very active and first intimidating serbs and serbian candidate, who would like to vote and run in elections, and second, in attacking our police, journalists but, first and foremost, nato soldiers on 29 may. you ve chosen, in that answer, to pile all of the blame on your serbian minority population. that is not the way the international community sees things right now. i never blame serbian minority population. they are 4% of population in kosovo, less than half of them live north of the river ibar, but i was blaming two specific organisations, and also belgrade who is controlling them, for the violent riots, for the violent
welcome to pristina and thank you for having me. well, it s a great pleasure to be in your office. prime minister, how close has kosovo come to seeing a renewal of conflict in the last few months? it has been very heavy because the two extremist terrorist organisations, which are being financed by serbia, and from where they also receive their orders, civil protection and the northern brigade have been very active and first intimidating serbs and serbian candidates who would like to vote and run in elections. and second, in attacking our police, journalists, but first and foremost, nato soldiers on 29 may. you ve chosen in that answer to pile all of the blame on your serbian minority population. that is not the way the international community sees things right now. i never blame serbian minority population. they are 4% of population in kosovo, less than half of them live north of the river ibar, but i was blaming two specific organisations and also belgrade, who is also contr
at least four of them in the north of your country. they say they have clear evidence and i m quoting now from the serbian press, beating and torturing of ethnic serbians in their home communities. they name an individual man who has been pictured with his head in a bag, barechested, he has been beaten, these are pictures the serbs say were circulated within the kosovo police force, bragging about the abuse of ethnic serbs. what are you doing about that? out of a dozen of these violent extremists, which have been arrested, there has been one case of misconduct of a policeman, who has been immediately suspended but otherwise on all other allegations, my minister ofjustice and minister of internal affairs have sent letters to mr borrell.
and this is the root cause the lack of participation in democratic process. low turnout, hollow legitimacy, i recognise early elections. this much i can do. and article 72 of local self government law on local self government says that, with 20% of electoral body in a municipality, they can start the process to trigger early elections. let s do that. i m going to help. so you cannot from the streets with militia get into mayor s office. only through democratic processes. but you know that the serbs aren t going to go back into the municipal offices. they re not going to agree to participate in new elections, unless you make a promise to give them this autonomous association of serb communities. if you won t give them that, even if you have new elections in those communities, the serbs won t take part so you aren t really achieving anything. do you have a solution, which might solve this problem? i have offered, again, a model,