Kosovo

The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo on Friday welcomed an agreement to resume rail services between the two countries as an important step toward calmer relations between the two estranged nations. It follows an earlier breakthrough on resuming air links.

Japan has since announced that its ambassador-designate to Kosovo in 2019 will be its former ambassador to Mozambique from 2014-17, Akira Mizutani. Based in Vienna, he serves also as Ambassador to Austria. Mizutani has served in Japan's foreign ministry for decades, in embassies such as Turkey, Germany and Pakistan.

The new government will have 15 ministries, instead of the 12 planned so far, with the Prime Minister, Kurti, coming from Vetevendosje, and the speaker from the LDK. The President of Kosovo's post - another thorny issue - is off the table for the moment.

Albin Kurti, Kosovo's candidate for Prime Minister, has only until next Tuesday to form a new government - while the two main parties, his own Vetevendosje Movement and the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, have not yet reached a coalition agreement.

Grenell is coming to Belgrade tomorrow to talk to the Serbian President.
He met in Pristina today with Albin Kurti, as prime minister-designate to form a new Kosovo Government.

Serbian, Kosovo and NATO leaders on Monday welcomed the signing of an agreement to reopen the air link between Pristina and Belgrade that was broken 21 years ago.

US diplomats oversaw the signing of the agreement in Berlin, which will mean flights being operated by Lufthansa's budget carrier, Eurowings.

Albania Prime Minister Edi Rama (left) and Kosovo's Ramush Haradinaj at a reception in Tirana on September 27, 2017. Photo: Gent Shkullaku/LSA

"The suit of the Prime Minister Rama is totally baseless and a political diversion conducted by him to hide himself after new media soap operas, and so avoid responsibilities," Haradinaj wrote.

In an abrupt turn of events in Kosovo, the leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo, Isa Mustafa, on Thursday said his party was willing to vote for a minority government led by Albin Kurti's Vetevendosje party, but will stay in opposition and not join it.

Shpend Maxhuni, the controversial former head of Kosovo's Intelligence Agency, KIA, is to return to police work, police told BIRN, less than a month after he resigned from the KIA with outgoing Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj citing "personal and health reasons".

That Kosovo needs a new national sports stadium was obvious even before 300,000 fans were left to vie online for just 13,000 tickets to this month's Euro 2020 qualifier in Pristina with England.

But plans to build a new one have been taken hostage by politics.