Kosovo Parliament Rejects Serb Minister's Cyrillic

A document in Cyrillic was rejected on Monday during a meeting of the Kosovo parliament's commission for legislation, with its head Albulena Haxhiu saying that the format was not "typical" and requesting a legal interpretation of the issue.

"As you saw, the proposal made by the Ministry for Communities and Returns came in a different format, one which is not typical for the parliament of the Republic of Kosovo, with the logo of the parliament in Cyrillic," said Haxhiu during the meeting.

"Without a correct interpretation of this by parliamentary bodies, I think we should not proceed with the proposals from the Ministry for Communities and Returns," added Haxhiu.

The document was submitted by the Minister for Returns and Communities, Dalibor Jevtic, a Serb, and included legal aid proposals.

But Jevtic said that the use of Cyrillic, a script commonly used by Serbs, should not be considered an obstacle.

"My institution respects the rights of all communities in Kosovo, as the constitution guarantees the rights and differences of all communities," Jevtic told BIRN.

"I think we have much more important issues to deal with, and should not deal with irrelevant problems," he added.

He said that he had received official emails and correspondences in Albanian, which he claimed was a violation of the law on languages.

Language barriers provide one of the biggest problems in the relationship between the two main ethnic communities in Kosovo, Albanians and Serbs.

A vast majority of the population does not speak the language of the other, apart from people from the older generation who still speak Serbo-Croat, the official language of Yugoslavia.

The Law on the Use of Languages, passed in 2006, during the UN Mission in...

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