Kurti: Serb List legitimacy in doubt

“The legitimacy of the Serb List is a huge issue. There is no authenticity in the Serb List,” he told BBC Serbian.

Kurti, whose Vetendosje party won more votes than any other party at last week’s parliamentary elections and is set to form a coalition government, said that he can guarantee that the Kosovo Serbs will enjoy more rights than they do now by the end of his term in office. He said that Serbian will be spoken more in Kosovo and living standards would be higher. “You can speak Serbian freely in Pristina today. Where the war-time massacres happened is different,” he said.  

“We live in a time when granting political and civil rights is useless if you don’t have a job and have to emigrate and that is true of both Serbs and Albanians, Kurti said.

He said that he wants to form a team to negotiate with Serbia and added that he will head that team which will include the opposition. He warned that those talks should not be rushed. There is a lot to do and all the views held to date stem from the false need to reach an agreement as soon as possible, he said. If this is an emergency situation, democracy could be suspended in order to keep autocrats in power, he added. Kurti said he would insist on there being no agreement without a dialogue and no dialogue with maps.