Gazeta Express

The embassy also expressed concern over the appointment of those who have been convicted of other serious criminal offenses, as well as the recruitment of persons without proper qualifications to positions in the executive branch.

The meeting later this month will bring together top representatives of Belgrade and Pristina.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz suggested this in Pristina on Tuesday.

Pristina-based daily Zeri writes today that Haradinaj said that "the idea of border change is dead" and that "such scenarios have only resulted in tragedies in the Balkans."

The Kosovo president stressed that the final agreement would only make sense if, as he said, "Serbia recognizes Kosovo as a state."

Speaking at an ambassadorial conference in Pristina, Thaci said that Pristina will make the maximum effort to remove all obstacles to Kosovo's membership in the UN.

Photo: Reuters (2012)

Former KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army / UCK) leader Ramush Haradinaj, after his return from France, whose government last week refused to extradite him to Serbia to face trial for war crimes, sent a message to the Prime Minister and newly elected President of Serbia Aleksandar Vucic "not to play with the Albanians", the Kosovo newspaper "Gazeta Express" reports.

Italian police and the Carabinieri on Wednesday night arrested suspected Islamist militants from Kosovo - with valid residence permits in Italy - following 12 raids - 10 of which were in Venice's historic centre, one in Mestre, the mainland suburb of Venice, and one in Treviso.

Western Balkan governments and the European Union have over the past year failed to take action to address the issues hindering media freedom in the region, the NGO Human Rights Watch, HRW, said in the 2016 update of its media freedom report.

It added that new, troubling cases of threats and attacks on journalists had meanwhile emerged - but also remained unpunished.

International media freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders on Wednesday called on the Kosovo authorities to protect Leonard Kerquki, editor-in-chief of tabloid newspaper Gazeta Express, after a television documentary he produced about crimes against Serbs attracted a series of death threats.

BELGRADE – An investigation into alleged crimes by members of the former ethnic Albanian paramilitary Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), led by U.S. prosecutor Clint Williamson and launched based on a report by former Parlaimentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) special rapporteur Dick Marty, will be completed no later than the end of the year.