Kosovo Won't Recognise Catalonia, Haradinaj Says

The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, has told the Spanish daily newspaper El Pais that his country will never recognise the independence of Catalonia from Spain, adding that Kosovo and Catalonia do not have anything in common and "establishing any analogy is senseless".

"Kosovo was born from the disintegration of the Yugoslavia Federation, in a bloody process of everyone against everyone. This is not the case of Spain, where civil and political rights are respected," Haradinaj told El Pais.

Haradinaj added that insisting on the similarity between the two cases would mean "not acknowledging history or misinterpreting it".

"Spain is an advanced democracy. Our case comes from the dissolution, through tragic wars, of the old Yugoslavia, in the 1990s. There is a huge difference: we were fighting for democracy but, above all, for human rights. This is not Catalonia's case," he said.

The former province of Serbia declared its independence in 2008 and Serbia has vowed never to recognize it.

Spain is one of five EU states that also do not recognise Kosovo's independence, alongside Slovakia, Cyprus, Romania, and Greece.

The newspaper quoted Haradinaj as saying Spain that is "an admirable" country and Kosovo respects it as a nation "for its history to its worldwide civilisation".

Spain, meanwhile, has its own separatist issues with both the Basque Country and Catalonia, whose leader, Carles Puigdemont, declared the region's independence last October before fleeing into exile. Spain has since arrested a number of Catalan leaders but the standoff over Catalonia's future continues.

The Kosovo leader said his country was committed to regional stability. "This is our destiny, for our and everybody's...