Kosovan parliamentary election

The director of Serbia's Government Office for Kosovo, Marko Djuric, has called on Srpska Lista [Serbian List], the Belgrade-backed political option in Kosovo, to stay out of what he called the "Albanian-Albanian" political conflict in the country.

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.

Meetings between the leader of Vetvendosje Movement and the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo, Albin Kurti and the leader of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) Isa Mustafa, ended without results in forming a new government, the Pristina-based portal "Ekonomija online" writes.

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 Election Complaints and Appeals Panel, ECAP, said on Monday that votes from more than half of the polling stations in the country must be recounted, and declared that votes that were sent from Serbia were invalid.

However, after determining the final results of the Kosovo elections, if the coalition of Fatmir Limaj and Behgjet Pacolli NISMA-ANK enter parliament in Pristina after all, the first-ranked Albin Kurti's Vetvendosje and Isa Mustafa's Democratic League of Kosovo would no longer have the votes of 61 MPs, required for a government vote.

Around 2 million people will be eligible to vote on Sunday in Kosovo's snap elections, which were triggered by the sudden resignation of Ramush Haradinaj as prime minister in July and the dissolution of parliament a month later.

Sharp disagreements among Kosovo officials over whether the import tax of 100 per cent on goods from Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina should be revoked have fresh sparked warnings that the government could fall and be forced to hold snap elections.

Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj is not budging from his stance that the tax will only be scrapped when Serbia recognises Kosovo.

Municipal staff in the Kosovo capital, Pristina, as well as journalists from the public broadcaster, RTK, on Monday joined the wave of strikes sweping the country against the new law on wages.

These reports recall that Serb members left the government in protest over the arrest of the Director of the Serbian Government's Office for Kosovo and Metojija Marko Djuric, who is also the chief negotiator in the dialogue with Pristina.