KOSOVO: Prime Minister and ex-guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci bids to extend his six-year hold on power in a parliamentary election under the shadow of EU-led organ harvesting investigation threatening his former comrades in arms
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696080
KOSOVO: Prime Minister and ex-guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci bids to extend his six-year hold on power in a parliamentary election under the shadow of EU-led organ harvesting investigation threatening his former comrades in arms
- Title: KOSOVO: Prime Minister and ex-guerrilla commander Hashim Thaci bids to extend his six-year hold on power in a parliamentary election under the shadow of EU-led organ harvesting investigation threatening his former comrades in arms
- Date: 5th June 2014
- Summary: END OF THE RALLY/ THACI WAVING AT SUPPORTERS
- Embargoed: 20th June 2014 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Kosovo
- Country: Kosovo
- Topics: Domestic Politics
- Reuters ID: LVACD212HOCEKRYFD0RCVJMJTPP7
- Story Text: Hashim Thaci's 'thumbs-up' has become his trademark gesture through successive election campaigns since he helped lead a guerrilla insurgency to throw off Serbian rule over Kosovo 15 years ago.
The thumbs were on show again this week in the western town of Gjakova, where 46-year-old Thaci was on the campaign trail ahead of an election on Sunday he hopes will give him a third term as prime minister.
The show of confidence, however, belies a man under pressure from political rivals and a gruesome war crimes probe that threatens to ensnare his former comrades-in-arms, even his closest allies. Whoever wins on Sunday, attention will turn quickly to an ad hoc tribunal to be created under European Union auspices to try those responsible for the alleged harvesting of organs from Serb prisoners-of-war during the 1998-99 conflict.
The findings of a special EU-appointed task force investigating the allegations are expected to be published "before the summer period", a Western diplomat told Reuters. Another said the report had been delayed from early June to avoid disrupting the election.
Kosovo Albanian political leaders, many of them drawn from the ranks of the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), have branded the probe a bid to tarnish their fight for freedom from repression under Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia, a fight that eventually won them NATO air support.
"We have nothing to hide from our friends and partners, from the democratic world," Thaci told Reuters in Gjakova, where the historic Ottoman market quarter was painstakingly restored after it was razed by Serb paramilitaries at the end of the last century during a brutal counter-insurgency war.
"I re-emphasize that even before, there were accusations from The Hague (United Nations war crimes) tribunal, and KLA commanders prevailed against injustice and slander. The war of the Kosovo people was a just war," he said.
Prosecutors and diplomats say efforts to investigate war crimes allegedly committed by the KLA have run into witness intimidation and a culture of reverence for the former guerrillas and deep clan loyalty.
The organ harvesting allegations hit the headlines in 2011 with publication of an explosive report by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty.
He alleged that Thaci and four high-ranking members of the prime minister's Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) were part of a group involved in the sale abroad of organs removed from Serb prisoners who had been smuggled out of Kosovo to a makeshift clinic in Albania during the war.
Thaci says the accusations are an outrage, but - under Western pressure - his government has agreed to the creation of an ad hoc tribunal.
All four of his party allies named in the report are running for parliament on Sunday. One of them, Kadri Veseli, was beside Thaci in his party rally in Gjakova.
Political analyst Astrit Gashi doesn't see any danger of destabilization of the country in case new arrests are made.
"The newly established international court is not good news for Kosovo. It shows our deficiency in governance. There were expectations that there will be arrests before the elections which did not happen, I don't see that this court will endanger Kosovo political stability with arrests and indictments," said Gashi.
Due to concerns over how to protect witnesses and the reliability of courts in Kosovo, the tribunal will sit abroad, possibly in the Netherlands. It will apply Kosovo law, but the judges and prosecutors will be foreigners.
Pursued doggedly by Serbia, the question of the organ harvesting allegations has become a matter of credibility for the EU's efforts to instill the rule of law in Kosovo through its biggest foreign mission, known as EULEX. The mission deals with sensitive cases of war crimes, corruption and organised crime.
To many among Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority, the accusations are an insult. Hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes in 1998-99 by Serbian forces during Slobodan Milosevic's last throw of the dice after wars in Croatia and Bosnia during the collapse of socialist Yugoslavia. An estimated 10,000 people died, most of them Albanians.
NATO intervened with 78 days of air strikes before Kosovo became a ward of the United Nations. The landlocked territory of 1.8 million people declared independence in 2008 with the backing of the West and has been recognised by more than 100 countries since. NATO still has 5,000 soldiers on the ground.
Despite signs of a thaw with Serbia, Kosovo's former master says it will never recognise its former southern province as sovereign, and Belgrade's big-power ally Russia is blocking the new country's accession to the United Nations.
Even without the added headache of the tribunal, Thaci's popularity has taken a hit as frustrations grow among Kosovo Albanians over widespread corruption, nepotism and poverty after six years of PDK rule. Thaci fought back with a 25-percent public sector pay rise just two months before the election.
The head of LDK opposition party Isa Mustafa told his supporters at a rally that his candidates never had a problem with the law.
"Our governing program represents the best offer for Kosovo. We have in our parliamentary group (of future MP's) experts, respected people, professionals, we have people that never had problems with the law, and these people will be the best lawmakers in Kosovo parliament," said Mustafa.
Opinion polls, which are not generally reliable, give the PDK a thin lead over its long-time rival, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). If the PDK wins, it will come under immediate Western pressure to pass the necessary laws and constitutional amendments to create the tribunal on foreign soil.
All main opposition parties told their supporters that they will not go in coalition with PDK to form the government.
The head of Vetevendosje (Self-determination) movement Albin Kurti told his supporters that if he wins, he will investigate previous governments for illegal sources of income.
"Unlawful extorted wealth will be returned to the people by investigating the cases in a retroactive manner. So, the old crime will still remain a crime," said Kurti. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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