Kosovo asked the European Union on Thursday to press aspirant member state Serbia to drop international arrest warrants for former Kosovar guerrillas, including one for an ex-prime minister who was detained in France recently.
Wednesday’s arrest of Ramush Haradinaj, who was a Kosovo guerrilla commander during the 1998 to 99 war against Serbian rule, prompted angry Kosovo government and opposition leaders to call for a halt to EU-mediated normalisation talks between Serbia and its former, mainly ethnic Albanian province.
The talks are an EU precondition for both countries to make progress towards membership of the bloc.
A security source in Pristina told newsmen that 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 neighbourly relations, but is proving that it is a destabilising factor in the whole region.
“While international partners should be seriously worried,’’ Tahiri told local media.
The next test of brittle Kosovo-Serbian relations will be Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic’s scheduled visit to a mainly ethnic Serb town in Kosovo on Friday, the eve of Christian Orthodox Christmas Day.
Report says 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 organised crime. (Reuters/NAN)