Is Kosovo moving to the peaceful life?

Four months after the elections of the Kosovo parliament, the autonomous region of Kosovo finally has its president. As it was expected, the elected president is the leader of the Democratic Union of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, who enjoys the biggest support among the Albanian population of Kosovo and Metohia. Eighty-eight (out of the total number of 119) deputies voted for Rugova. Bayram Rexhepi, the former doctor of the Liberation Army of Kosovo, was elected prime minister.

Rugova's party reportedly obtained four positions in the governments, Hashim Taci’s movement and Ramush Haradinaj’s Alliance for the Future of Kosovo got two seats in the government. The Serbian coalition Return will be represented by one minister only. The Serbs were not happy about such situation, and they refused to support Rugova’s candidacy at the voting in the parliament.

This Albanian politician has finally got the position of the president, but he did not enjoy the triumph though. Rugova failed to become the president before, there were three attempts made. This basically happened because of Hashim Taci’s position (the former chief of the so-called Liberation Army of Kosovo, the leader of the second biggest party in the Kosovo parliament), who refused to support Rugova.

At the end of the day the parties found the consensus, which was good for the Albanians. Four major parties of the Albanian majority reached consent regarding the distribution of the positions in the new government, the candidacies, running for presidency, and regarding the head of the Kosovo government.

Ibrahim Rugova’s candidacy came up in Kosovo at the second half of the 1990s. Rugova was one of those, who signed the document pertaining to the cancellation of amendments to the Constitution of Serbia in 1989. Those amendments liquidated Kosovo’s increased autonomy. Rugova was excluded from the Union of Yugoslavia’s communists after that, and the separatist movement of Kosovo’s Albanians started setting up around him. Rugova founded the first political party of Kosovo in the beginning of December of 1989 – the Democratic Union of Kosovo.

Now, when Rugova is elected president, the Western analysts hope that the longstanding political crisis in the region will be over with soon. However, the restoration of the Kosovo infrastructure, the stabilization of the economic, social, cultural life in the nearest future is out of the question. PRAVDA.Ru has already reported about this in its article &to=http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/14/25481.html' target=_blank>Rugova To Be Elected For The First Time. Anarchy Rules In Kosovo.If everything would be quite and peaceful in Kosovo one fine day, this would mean the only thing: the Albanian drug mafia totally controls the situation.

The representatives of the UN mission in the region keep saying that “independent Kosovo” is out of the question now, since the president, the prime minister and the parliament of the region are interim, and they will not be able to discuss the issue pertaining to the change of the status of the region in the coming three years.

This was said by the representative for UN civil mission for press, Simon Hazelock. As Hazelock stressed, the defense ministry, the ministry for justice and protection of the national minorities would still be under the jurisdiction of the UN civil mission. Furthermore, the head of the UN mission Schtainer is supposed to sign any legislative act, submitted to the parliament for the approval; Schtainer also has a right to veto the laws that are passed by the parliament.

However, the independent observers keep noticing that both UN and other international organizations have lost the control over the development of the situation in the rebellious area. Anatoly Utkin, the director of the center of the international research of the Institute of the USA and Canada, Doctor of History believes that the leaders of Kosovo’s Albanians were going to use the parliamentary methods in order to achieve their political, separatist goals (read the interview with Anatoly Utkin &to=http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/24/25974.html' target=_blank>here). The self-disbanded Liberation Army of Kosovo will establish the militant Kosovo republic, and UN representatives will not be able to stop that.

Sergey Yugov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov