Albania–Serbia relations

Are political calculations behind a practice in Serbia to classify as inactive the addresses of people deemed no longer living at their registered addresses, a significant number of them ethnic Albanians?

It was June 13, 1999, and Uli Reinhardt, a photojournalist from the German news magazine Stern was due to meet his colleague Gabriel Gruener at 6pm in the southern Kosovo city of Prizren.

But Gruener would never arrive for the meeting, and could not be contacted by mobile phone because Kosovo's telecommunications system had been damaged in the war.

Albania's parliament voted on Thursday to set up an investigative committee to collect information on other investigations conducted by local and international bodies into alleged crimes committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army in Albania in the war in Kosovo two decades ago.

The parliament will then present a resolution based on the findings.

Drita Hajdari told BIRN on Thursday that Kosovo's Special Prosecution Office has opened a preliminary investigation into Serbian police special forces' attack on the Jashari family compound in Prekaz from March 5-7, 1998, in which guerrilla commander Adem Jashari and 58 of his relatives were killed.

Sanije Rexha and Kushtrim Balaj, both former officials of the Division of Internal and External Control at Kosovo's Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, went on trial for abuse of office at Pristina Basic Court on Monday in a case connected to a major scandal over fraudulent applications for the official status of verified Kosovo Liberation Army war veteran.

Haxhi Balaj remembers that it was sunny on May 5, 1999, and that his mother Shehrije was trying to find something for lunch for the family.

They had run out of flour, among the many other things they were missing in those difficult days during the Kosovo war.

Two more former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters have confirmed that they have been invited to give interviews to the Kosovo Specialist Prosecution in The Hague, which is investigating alleged violations by Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA fighters during and just after the 1998-99 war.

The appeals court in Pristina has upheld the verdict that found Milorad Zajic not guilty of committing war crimes against the civilian population and violations of the Geneva Conventions.

That is why he does not want to speak with those that the Serbs elected, Director of the Government Office for Kosovo and Metohija, Marko Djuric added.

The ethnic Albanian vice-president of the Montenegrin parliament, Genci Nimanbegu, has claimed that Albanians, who make up about 5 per cent of the  country's population, remain discriminated against in the public sector, pointing as an example to the small multi-ethnic municipalities of Plav and Gusinje.