Kosovo’s Constitution went into force yesterday, handing the newly independent nation’s ethnic Albanian government power after nine years of UN administration.
The charter — a milestone that comes four months after leaders declared independence from Serbia — has given the government in Pristina sole decision-making authority.
But it has threatened to worsen ethnic tensions between Kosovo’s Albanians and Serbs. Security in the divided northern town of Mitrovica was high a day after a gunman attacked a police station, wounding one officer.
Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leaders were to mark the Constitution in a low-key ceremony in Pristina later yesterday that would open with Kosovo’s newly approved anthem, but without the words to avoid offending Serbs.
Serbs, who make up less than 5 percent of Kosovo’s population of 2 million, strongly opposed the ethnic Albanian leadership’s decision to declare independence from Serbia after UN-mediated talks fell through last year.
“Serbia views Kosovo as its southern province,” Serbian President Boris Tadic said yesterday.
“It will defend its integrity by peaceful means, using diplomacy, without resorting to force,” he said.
In an attempt to undermine Kosovo’s independence and the ceremony in Pristina, Serbia’s top official for Kosovo, Slobodan Samardzic, shunned the ceremony in Pristina, instead visiting the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica.
Samardzic is expected to promise an assembly for the north, the region of Kosovo bordering Serbia — a move that would bring Kosovo closer to a partition along ethnic lines.
Tadic said his government would insist on a new round of internationally mediated talks on Kosovo.
“This will be our strategy and our response to the proclamation of an illegal state in Kosovo,” he said.
The plan to shift Kosovo to government control envisaged a EU team acting as overseers and taking over from the UN administration, which stepped in following a 78-day, NATO-led air war in 1999 to stop former leader Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
An estimated 10,000 people died in the Serb crackdown, mainly ethnic Albanians.
However, Russia blocked the EU from taking on the role, prompting the UN to stay in charge of Serb areas while gradually handing areas over to the EU’s police officers, judges and advisers.
Russia said it considers the 2,200-strong EU mission illegal because it has not been approved by the UN Security Council.
Since 1999, Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs have struggled to bridge their differences.
Many Serbs lead isolated lives and have often endured attacks by vengeful ethnic Albanians.
Most of Kosovo’s 100,000 remaining Serbs live in Kosovo’s north in a region separated by a river from the Albanians.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS