Fatmir Limaj

Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci addressed the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday as defence lawyers began their opening statements in his trial, saying he anticipates that he will be cleared.

"I expect to be acquitted," Thaci told the court.

The end of 2017 was also the end of Malcolm Simmons' career as an international judge in the Balkans.

Malcolm Simmons, a former head judge for the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX told the Kosovo parliamentary commission on legislation on Monday that the mission prioritised putting prominent wartime figures on trial despite having little evidence, and failed to protect witnesses and deliver justice.

The opposition Vetevendosje party was on course for a landslide victory in snap parliamentary elections in Kosovo on Sunday, on a day that its leader and prime ministerial candidate, Albin Kurti, described as a "bright day" when he cast his ballot at a Pristina polling centre in the morning.

Kosovo's largest parliamentarian party, the Vetevendosje Movement, LVV, staged a march in Pristina's main Skanderbeg Square on Friday to mark the 15th anniversary of its organisation - and the 21st anniversary of Kosovo's liberation from Serbian rule in 1999.

After the heads of the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK, Isa Mustafa, and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, AAK, former prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, on Wednesday agreed to work on creating a new coalition government, President Thaci said he would give a mandate to form a government to whatever coalition was able to assemble a majority.

If Washington's threats of denying economic aid and withdrawing US troops from Kosovo and Metohija do not discipline the prime minister of interim Pristina institutions, Albin Kurti, and in case he does not suspend tariffs, it is not excluded that the United States will pull another trump card - a change of government in Pristina.

Sabit Geci, a former Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA commander, said he was interviewed on Thursday by the Kosovo Specialist Prosecution, which is probing wartime and post-war crimes.

The entry of the Social-Democratic Initiative-New Kosovo Alliance coalition into the Kosovo Parliament and the reduction of the number of MPs to the two leading parties - Vetvendosje and the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) - present new set of circumstances.

Kosovo's outgoing Prime Minister had resigned on July 19, 2019, after he was summoned by Special Prosecution from the Hague, as a suspect for the crimes committed by KLA on Kosovo, in the period from 1999 to 2000.