Leaders of Kosovo's Vetevendosje party rallied supporters in Albania - declaring that the campaign against ratification of the Kosovo-Montenegro border deal would continue.
Fatjona Mejdini
BIRN
Tirana
Vetevendosje leaders speaking to activists in Tirana on Tuesday evening.
Two leaders of Kosovo's Vetevendosje [Self determination] Movement, party chairman Visar Ymeri and one of the founders, Albin Kurti, rallied several hundred supporters in Tirana, Albania, on Tuesday, explaining why they oppose the Kosovo parliament adopting a demarcation deal with Montenegro.
Calling on supporters in Albania to back them, Ymeri said the anti-demarcation campaign had showed the importance of pan-Albanian unity. "We have to be together in important things," he told the activists.
Kurti called the Kosovo parliament's postponement of a vote on the demarcation agreement a major victory for Vetevendosje and promised that action would continue.
"On September 1, we achieved a big victory while we save 8,200 hectares of Kosovo land that was ready to pass to Montenegro," he said.
"Our protests, petitions, and arguments made the [ruling] Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK, the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, and the Serbian List withdraw from the agreement," Kurti added.
The movement claims that the agreement would result in the surrender of thousands of hectares of land to Montenegro.
He and Ymeri claimed that Kosovo Prime Minister, Isa Mustafa, and other political opponents did not want to admit that the real reason for the postponement of the vote was their pressure.
Following a protest rally by Vetevendosje in Pristina on September 1, the Kosovo parliament postponed the ratification agreement.
However, Mustafa said the government had withdrawn the agreement from the agenda in part because an unnamed “parliamentary group asked for concessions”.
While the Kosovo Serbian party, the Serbian List, a government coalition partner, was not present at the assembly, the allusion was that they had set conditions for voting in favour of the deal.
Kurti disputed this interpretation. "They didn't need the votes of the Serbian List to proceed with the agreement," he said in Tirana.
"In the plenary session, they had 80 out of the 120 votes that the agreement needed to pass. What they didn't have was the social peace necessary for this important agreement to be implemented," he added.
Kurti also said tensions were growing in the Balkans and a new conflict might erupt there; Croatia and Serbia were in an arms race, he said, while the Bosnian Serb referendum in Republika Srpska was a threat to Balkan stability.
"As a result of the problems in Balkans in the next for or five years, there are more chances of having a new conflict in the region than not having one," he concluded.
- See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/vetevendosje-asks-support-in-tirana-over-demarcation-with-montenegro-09-21-2016#sthash.SBnwgpIk.dpuf
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