Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


Brittle Kosovo, Serbia Ties Feel Strain over Ex-Prime Minister's Arrest

by Reuters

   PRISTINA, KOSOVO --

   Brittle diplomatic ties between Serbia and Kosovo came under further
   strain Thursday in a row over international arrest warrants issued by
   Belgrade for former Kosovar guerrillas, including an ex-premier
   detained in France.

   Ramush Haradinaj, a guerrilla commander during the 1998-99 war against
   Serbian rule who served briefly as prime minister in 2004 and 2005, was
   arrested on Wednesday and remanded in prison by a French court
   Thursday.

   Kosovo asked the European Union on Thursday to press Serbia to drop the
   warrants against him and others, and angry government and opposition
   leaders in Pristina called for a halt to EU-mediated normalization
   talks between Belgrade and its former, mainly ethnic Albanian province.

   The talks are a precondition for both countries to make progress toward
   membership of the bloc.

   As Serbia -- which still formally considers Kosovo part of its
   territory -- confirmed it would seek Haradinaj's extradition, Kosovo
   canceled a visit by Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic to a mainly
   ethnic Serb town in Kosovo scheduled for Friday, the eve of Christian
   Orthodox Christmas Day.

   FILE - Serbia's President Tomislav Nikolic arrives at the 70th session
   of the United Nations General Assembly at the U.N. Headquarters in New
   York, Sept. 30, 2015.

   A Serbian government official who asked not to be named said Nikolic's
   forward team was "harassed" at the border crossing and could not
   perform necessary security checks.

   "The visit will not proceed as planned, this is likely related to the
   Haradinaj arrest," the official said.

   'Primitive acts'

   Serbia has charged him with murders of Serbs in the late 1990s war,
   while the majority of Kosovo's 1.8 million population are opposed to
   any trials of ex-guerrillas they see as freedom fighters.

   A security source in Pristina told Reuters that, in all, there were
   currently around 20 Kosovo citizens subject to Interpol Red Notice
   arrest warrants -- mainly ex-members of the Kosovo Liberation Army
   (KLA) that fought Serbian security forces.

   Kosovo's minister in charge of the EU-brokered dialogue with Serbia,
   Edita Tahiri, said she had written to Brussels asking it to use its
   leverage to make Serbia withdraw the arrest warrants.

   "With these primitive acts, Serbia is not only hurting the spirit of
   the dialogue to have good neighborly relations, but is proving that it
   is a destabilizing factor in the whole region, and international
   partners should be seriously worried," Tahiri told local media.

   Serbia hopes to complete accession talks with the EU by 2020. Kosovo,
   which declared independence in 2008, has signed a trade and association
   pact with the EU but remains far from membership due to serious
   corruption and organized crime.

   Extradition request

   Haradinaj appeared late Thursday at the appeals court in Colmar,
   eastern France, which ruled he would remain in prison until Serbia made
   a formal request for his extradition. That would then be studied by the
   relevant institution, the court said.

   FILE - Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic speaks during the
   Business Forum Serbia-Albania, in the town of Nis, Serbia, Oct. 14,
   2016.

   Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said Thursday that, if France
   did not extradite Haradinaj, West European states should stop
   "patronizing" Serbia about judicial reforms it had undertaken to help
   qualify for EU accession.

   After his stints as premier, Haradinaj was tried and acquitted twice of
   war crimes at a U.N. tribunal in The Hague.

   At the time, Kosovo was a ward of the United Nations.

   The war ended after NATO bombed Serbia for 11 weeks to compel it to
   withdraw forces who had killed some 10,000 Albanian civilians in
   counterinsurgency operations.

   In June 2015, Haradinaj, now an opposition party leader, was arrested
   by Slovenian police but freed after two days following diplomatic
   pressure.

   Around 130,000 people were killed in a decade of conflict following the
   breakup of old federal Yugoslavia, and its successor states were loath
   to prosecute their own ethnic kin.

   Western governments that believed prosecutions of all sides were needed
   to bring reconciliation and stability to the region and move it closer
   to the EU set up two international criminal courts -- one for former
   Yugoslav republics (ICTY) such as Bosnia, and one for Kosovo, both
   based in The Hague.

   Set up in 1993, the ICTY is due to complete its work this year, having
   prosecuted and jailed mainly Bosnian Serbs. The Kosovo court came into
   being only at the beginning of this year and indictments must wait
   until judges, none of whom has yet taken office, have drawn up rules of
   procedure.