The Remarkable Life Story of Kosovo’s Prime Minister

How did peace come to the Balkans? How hard will it be to maintain? What was it like to be a political prisoner? Is Serbia more allied with the West, or with Vladimir Putin?

Rory and Alastair are joined by the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, to discuss all this and more.

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Welcome to the rest of’s politics leading with me Rory Stewart and me alist Campbell and we are about to interview another serving prime minister in this case the prime minister of Kosovo just to set it in context Kosovo is a small country it’s a little bit larger geographically than Cambria

Considerably smaller than Yorkshire got a population about 1.7 million people and it was right at the heart of the key Wars of the 1990s because as former Yugoslavia began to disintegrate Kosovo which was part of Serbia but which had a predominantly Albanian and traditionally Muslim population compared to Serbia which had

A predominantly ethnically Serbian and Serbian Orthodox population began to come under increasing pressure from mosovich the leader of Serbia ethnic cleansing took place and the Kingdom the US and others intervened on behalf of Kosovo drove back the Serbian forces and created an autonomous kovo which was eventually

Recognized by many but not all the countries in the world so in the European Union for example Kosovo is absolutely recognized as an independent state by Britain France and Germany but countries like Greece uh continue Cyprus continue Spain continue to hold out against recognition and that tells you a

Lot lot about nationalism changing borders obviously the reason Spain doesn’t recognize it is they’re worried about Catalonia breaking away but it is also really relevant to listeners today because we are now at one of the most dangerous situations that we’ve had in the Balkans since aliser was very

Closely involved in the kovo war in uh 1999 2000 because we have a nationalist leader in Serbia making significant threats on behalf of the small Serbian population that still exists in Kosovo who he believes are being discriminated against and stories of pgms and attacks on them untrue Stories being put in the

Serbian newspaper to whip up the possibility of a war so we’re talking to a prime minister of a very interesting tiny country that was the center of one of the greatest interventions the 1990s touched Alice’s life touched my life because I was I was there too at that

Time as a British Diplomat and maybe on the verge of another European conflict over the US I think conflict over States it right now but I think it is pretty tense and an Albin Cy at the time was a young student who ended up being imprisoned he organized protests and he was imprisoned

Eventually sentenced for kind of trumped up terrorism charges and sentenced to 15 years uh got out after a couple of years once mosovich was gone and then became a politician but he’s a sort of self style philosopher politician he he he’s he’s quite an intellectual very very well

Read um but I think we are in a situation at the moment where with him as prime minister and it took him five elections I think before he became prime minister um and he’s got himself in a position as we’ll put to him where a lot

Of the kind of powers that Kosovo was dependent upon then that he’s slightly at risk of alienating them the Americans have been quite critical of some of his positions the European Union has been quite critical uh he is absolutely adamant that president vuic in Serbia is

To blame for all the stuff that’s going on and likewise R says he’s to blame and he is convinced as well that vsh essentially is way more pro- Russian than Pro Western and yet the West continues to believe that they can sort of pull him over into into a better

Position so he’s an interesting guy as you say very very interesting country um and and one whose significance is way bigger than its geographical size or population and something that I think has become even more relevant at a time when aaban has attacked nagoro caraba when uh Russia is going after Ukraine

These stories about old nationalisms and the potential for conflict becomes much more relevant today so here we go Albin cty C Promist so thanks for being here I wonder if we could just start with that part of your life that I talked about when you were a young protester first of all where what your background was what family you came from and what made you this student activist um who became very

Very high-profile and clearly somebody of concern to the Yugoslav authorities uh thank you very much for having me uh I was born in Pristina my father comes from a village uh nearby Ulin in Montenegro he came to Pristina in 1963 to study in the uh faculty of mechanics

Uh Pristina University and there he met my mother my mother comes from a village nearby Pristina and uh both my parents being Engineers my mother engineer of construction I was very much into maths as a pupil as a student and uh I believed very much in science Natural

Sciences uh but ultimately being uh so much preoccupied with solving problems in mathematics uh that led me to uh analytic philosophy and uh afterwards I crossed the lamon from uh uh the other direction that some people do these days uh into Continental philosophy and then I was very much interested in social sciences

And as a student I got uh socially and politically active during the occupation of kosova can we PR interrupt for a second so you you went from being interested in the anglo-american philosophers kind of lock Barkley hum and then you you got into Continental Dera and these kind of people uh yes I

Was very much into uh Rasel FR wienstein Cantor and so on and uh then I was more interested about the linguistic term you know the late wienstein in contrast to the early one and got uh in touch with the um French philosophy of second uh half of 20th century and this was all

When you were studying in kosa uh yes this was uh in my like very early 20s and and can I just sort of for international listeners um paint a picture of kosovo’s development within Serbia I mean both alist and I worked briefly in kovo I was the British

Representative in montenigro at the just just after the Koso war and indeed as as you reminded me we we met 20 years ago when you were beginning your career um in the nonprofit that became a party but can you bring to life what kind of place

Kosovo was in the 1960s you say Your mother came from a village how developed was it how wealthy was it what did how many k albanians were engineers what what was the social structure what was the economic structure in the 1960s when your when your parents were growing up um

1966 is a very decisive year because back then the most notorious Serbian politician in Communist Party of Yugoslavia Alexander rankovic was purged in Bon plenum by Tito who was the Undisputed leader of former Yugoslavia and bit by bit autonomy of kosova started to increase we got first

University we got uh per to use Albanian flag uh to learn and teach in our language promise I’m so sorry but again FR nationalist is um the the key uh point is that a lot of the population of Kosovo which was then part of Yugoslavia and part of Serbia was Albanian as

Opposed to Serbian and traditionally I would have thought in religious terms Muslim as opposed to Serbian Orthodox and therefore there were ethnic and religious differences beginning to emerge between the majority of the population of kosova and the population of Serbia albanians were vast majority in kosova throughout the 20th century

Nowadays albanians are 93% serbs are 4% but serbs used to be around 10% in the 20th century and uh there was not much of ethnic division or language barrier as much as hegemony from Belgrade which wanted to instrumentalize differences in order to dominate over for for Yugoslavia so I believe that former

Yugoslavia was both created at the onset of 20th century and destroyed by the end of 20th century with the same goal to create greater Serbia and this has nothing to do with ethnicity and when you were a student and involved in protest and activism how how difficult

Was that to do you ended up in jail you ended up being pretty badly beaten was that something that you just assumed would happen because of the kind of repressive nature of the regime as I said I was very much into thinking I loved ideas and thinking but we pl a

Paride yes A Part High during the 90s when I was student of uh electrotechnics doing uh hard science became a bit absurd and futile due to repression of uh milosevich regime so you can do some very complicated uh problem solving in maths in formal mathematics I but nonetheless

When you go out from your apartment you have a policeman who is arrogant and violent towards you so I started to get organized with others so the social aspect of life was in Star contradiction with my thinking as a student and prime minister what was the shift then um from

Tito’s government to mich’s government and what did that mean from the way that the PO for the way the population in in kovo was treated what did you see what were the changes that were beginning to happen in the ’90s I think that the uh Belgrade political Elite had long time

Ago a plan how to dominate and centralize Yugoslavia but of course with the death of Tito they accelerated that plan and uh they uh started by uh abolishment of the autonomy of kosova which was not a republic but yet a constitutive element of former Federation of Yugoslavia and uh then they were hoping

That by destroying Yugoslavia they’re going to get at least half of it and kosova would be included there for sure so they didn’t hesitate to do ethnic cleansing and genocide as we know when did you realize that actually their their policy was one of ethnic cleansing

When did that when did that become clear to people there and my second question on that is was there ever a point at which you felt that the rest of the world kind of wouldn’t care uh when they uh started the colonization of Yugoslavia with serbs they used to

Say wherever a Serb lives there is Serbia that was a century ago by the end of 20th century they started to say wherever there is a Serbian grave there is Yugoslavia and that was a hint that basically they’re going to die for what they believe even though that’s

Shamanistic nationalistic and so on and so forth so uh mil speeches and what we have seen on the ground for example expulsion of albanians from hospitals from factories from schools and University made it clear that they don’t want us there they want our land without

Us and one one of the things that was a theme I guess is the serbs were making claims about the population in Kosovo in the Middle Ages you know what was happening in the 1300s and using that as part of their narrative about why kovo should be part of

Serbia when you look around the world when you look at Russia’s claims on Ukraine when you look at the way that um Israelis or Palestinians speak about their National rights within the Middle East can you see echoes in your mind of these types of historical National claims uh definitely uh just like

Milosovic believed that for example uh Yugoslavia and Bosnia and heroina are artificial States likewise today uh the potic President Putin believes that uh Ukraine is an artificial state so he goes for the natural dismantling of something which he considers artificial uh on the other hand um uh

The idea of uh uh revisionism and Nostalgia for uh golden age uh Peter the Great in 18th century also is an echo of milosevich uh recalling greater Serbia in medieval times but these are just uh narrative tools uh for hegemony of discourse and for mobilization of police

And military and when the when the war was at its height what what were you actually doing there at that point when I got politically active in students union back then with protests and demonstrations uh very soon it became clear that U kosov did not uh save

Itself from the war with uh let’s say peaceful passive resistance uh war is unavoidable with mosovich and back then in 1998 I joined um Adam Dei was like a Mandela he was 28 years in prison and um he was the political representative of kosova Liberation Army I worked as his uh secretary

Translator assistant I was his uh closest person in kosova Liberation Army in Pristina and when milovich was defeated did you know at that point that you that you wanted to become a politician did you feel that politics was the route you were going to go down I always considered myself a political

Activist so uh I never thought that I will ever become Member of Parliament let alone prime minister so these are all consequences of my actions and circumstances but never my goal and you set you set up a movement called the self-determination movement which morphed into the party that eventually

Got you into into the position you’re in now what is self-determination in the Modern Age how would you define that U self-determination is a principle of uh Collective freedom of people is a Democratic uh thing which means that comes from below not from above because uh we have heard sayings from Kremlin

That in Crimea there was a referendum there was a salination but we have seen Russian soldiers carrying out ballad boxes so salination is not something which comes from above but from below and in this sense I believe is uh one of the main driving forces for freedom of

People in 20th century and it might continue in this Century as well but what but don’t you see that some people might look at self-determination a place like Kosovo very small surrounded by all sorts of challenges particularly Serbia and is to some extent dependent upon alliances particularly with the United

States with the European Union so that self-determination when you you do require support you acquire allies around the world and you know I get the feeling that you you don’t worry too much about that you don’t worry so much about the alliances you’ve you’ve you know you’ve you’ve you’re not scared of

Upsetting people and you know in recent week just in recent days with the whole issue of the of the Dina where you as you say you’ve got 4% of the Serb population who some of whom use the Dina the Serb currency and and now they can’t and you’ve had the Americans criticizing

For it you’ve had the Europeans criticizing for it even maon and Schultz were critical about I mean you don’t seem to mind all that well first of all I don’t mind critique I’m intellectually a child of critical theory from let’s say Jean ja cruso to Frankfurt School so

Critique is healthy I believe that there’s no progress without critique we might disagree but uh uh European Union United States of America and UK are are our allies friends and partners this does not mean that our cooperation is a one-way street so we have to listen to

Each other and in this sense I believe that uh uh I have to defend kosova I have to represent it better than our allies even I wouldn’t be a prime minister if kosova wouldn’t be a republic and it’s not just partly recognized it’s 117 countries throughout

The world 22 out of 27 in EU 26 out of 30 NATO and kosova being a landlord country won the bid for mediterran games 2030 together with duras in Albania it’s still part it is what what I meant by that is it’s not universally recognized

That’s all I meant I wasn’t down and I know that recognition is a massive part of what you’re trying to achieve prime minister before we come back to your political and diplomatic style tell us a little bit about your experience in prison what does it feel like being a

Political prisoner what did you learn through the experience of being a prisoner how did it change you as a human being on one level there was nothing extraordinary albanians uh uh since the end of second world war Albanian political prisoners spent all together almost 700 centuries of imprisonment under Yugoslavia and Serbia

So I was just more of the same on another level it was very extraordinary experience for me because uh uh I was not typical political prisoner I was rather a war prisoner on 10th of June 1999 when Serbia was withdrawing its police and military forces in a convoy

They have put red buses with Albanian War prisoners in between so NATO wouldn’t bombed them and they used us as a shield I was uh transferred to prison in poat from prison in Lipan in kosova and poas being the hometown of Milos I spent all together two years and

Seven months in prison one year and five months during mosovich and one year and two months during kostun who came after milosevich and he pardoned you eventually yes so he uh was three months better than Milos and and tell us about what it’s like being in prison what

Somebody who’s not been in prison what is it difficult to imagine for someone who’s not been inside well I can say how it is in prison when I got in prisoned by United Nation mission in kosova and eex and kosovar police but during Serbia it was like a concentration camp it was

Not a prison I lost 30 kilogram in 1999 and uh there were like systematic tortures sometimes several times per day what sort of torture uh well beating with uh clubs with uh sticks uh uh many guards at the same time and these would be the people that then would be

Bringing you food and or would these just be people brought in for that purpose uh no these were the guards of uh so I was I was tortured by uniform still nowadays I do not consider that a Serb tortured me and what what was the purpose of it why were they

Beating you they were very angry at NATO intervention and they took it on us so they went weren trying to get information or anything they were just in the beginning yes but uh I was arrested during NATO bombardment so then information was not the most important

Thing anymore so it was more just like U hatred indignation and uh saying now you are going to pay for what NATO is doing to us without thinking what they did so NATO had to bomb them and in you had been convicted for 14 years so you must

15 yeah so you must have felt this is going to be I’m going to spend my entire youth in this place being beaten by these people I psychologically how did that feel I was just thinking that I have to make a plan for many years ahead

To learn some uh foreign language I was hoping uh I in the prison in Pat I found a book uh uh in Italian so I was thinking to learn Italian in prison uh because that was the only book available there and later on they started to give

Me books but uh mainly Uh Russian authors because they wanted to humiliate me so I read all of dostoevski and uh uh Pushkin in in prison in which language in seroc and what insight for example does that give you into somebody like Nelson Mandela and their capacity Mandela’s

Particular capacity to come out of prison and and forgive his captors and reconcile what what do you learn about someone like that having been through the experience of being a political prisoner yourself well I was staying in prison only 10% of Adam de and Mandela

So I think uh here uh volume matters so uh I will not be able to say anything in that regard however in prison you have a small space and a lot of time that is a place to really read without distractions uh and uh no mobile

Phones uh no drinking and I think that uh I made a use of it but at the same time being a urban middle class person uh I was hanging around in prison uh mainly with people who were coming from The Villages and that was indispensable to my ability to organize people when I

Come out so when I came out I managed to create this organization precisely because I knew how to talk and how to relate to people who were coming from the uh villages I mean I completely understand why you don’t want to compare yourself to Mandela but let me try another one

Possible comparison when you heard that Nal had died um was your immediate assumption like ours that the regime the Putin regime had killed him and how do you ever worried that that was going to happen to you uh yes I think that just like everyone else I was also thinking

That uh of course uh Putin himself ordered this murder not just that his regime killed him so I think that Putin knew the day perhaps even the hour when he will be killed uh because uh he’s that kind of dictator a dictator that micromanages into operations not anym

Strategy and uh beliefs he’s done with that uh but in case of uh uh me in Serbian prison uh I lost Consciousness over 40 times during torture and so on I have no chance to even imagine that I would come out alive with today’s body and age I was young and and

I was in my mid 20s and that was possible and sometimes uh there were so many Albanian political prisoners and War prisoners they were beating all of us not only me I was not that specific like naal you had you had thousands of albanians there I was a bit more prominent but

Nonetheless there were other people who were very prominent as well so perhaps to survive you get a bit luck as well so I’ve seen people dying after uh five minutes of beatings and I’ve seen people including myself who has beaten so many times and still

Come out alive this is not in our hands so to um tell us a little bit about Naval and your Reflections on the decision he made to voluntarily return to Russia to take the risk of being put in prison what do you think he was trying to achieve personally and

Politically through through what he did uh that is uh incredible uh individual strength and uh he didn’t want to join others who are working from Exile he wanted to give an example to give courage to people who are suppressed inside Russian Federation so it is possible to have a call for

Freedom also inside be that even in prison and I think that that was his goal to make a contrast of only Exile as possibility for resistance he wanted to do it inside Russian Federation and I think that he succeeded uh the name of Alexander naal will be the um organizing uh nomos of

Resistance in Russian uh Federation that is uh like having more than uh seeds now I think it will bloom in a near to midterm future I I was speaking to uh um somebody I know in Kosovo recently and I said that we were going to be talking

And he said that his big worry about Kosovo at the moment is that you have managed to build difficult troubled relationships with people who whose support you are you did need then and you’re going to need now and so for example you know I I think it’s

You talk about Brave it’s quite Brave I think to call The American Secretary of State naive when you’re talking about things that he’s trying to do you’ve been you know I think macron had some pretty harsh things to say about you and I I just want to go back to that point

Whether because it’s a different way of doing diplomacy it seems to me you you you you you seem to be deliberately very uncompromising I’m not saying that as a criticism that’s your style that’s your approach is that a fair assessment you don’t really worry if these bigger

Powers are coming at you and saying you are making this worse we’re going to run out of patience all my political activism has been marked by idealism on one level and on another level by consistence and insistence as much as I could do according to my abilities and knowledge the expressions of

These sometimes uh were a bit too much sometimes I overdid my insistence and consistence give me give me an example of what you overdid well speaking as a fellow overd just just like just like uh words that you use uh just like uh actions that uh

You insist in uh however you know we cannot change past we can learn lessons and um perhaps one of my flaws in this political activism has been that I’ve kept kept Diary of my thinking more than of my experience mhm and if I would have kept Diary of my experience perhaps

I could do better and more for others and improving myself do you mean literally a diary yes yeah you think you you have a thought diary yeah I I I write down in a notebook and uh a friend of mine jokes now that this is good also for cyber security Prim

Minister this quite uncompromising style is unusual in traditional politics policians politicians are normally famous for compromise flexibility is this approach that you take which is can be quite confrontational as as aliser says with with neighbors and supporters is it just part of your personal character or is it

A political technique do you believe that you can achieve more for your people by being more uncompromising uh I’ve done compromises but they are forgotten and they are shadowed by my insistence and consistence uh so if you unfold what I’ve been through you see a lot of compromises however if there are two

Principles in compromise making that I was trying to uh stay true to are number one um I think it was Gandhi who said no compromise in the center which means that you do compromises but not in the center which means that you define what is Center but you don’t tell your

Opponents what is Center for you so in a way no compromise in the center sorry explain that I don’t just go over that one again so uh first principle would have been uh no compromise in the center which means yes to compromise but not in

The center in thein what do you mean by in the center well if you have a topic if you have a subject if you have an issue that you negotiate with your counterpart what’s wrong with negotiating in the center no no I’m not saying that not to negotiate in the

Center I’m saying not to compromise in the center so uh this is number one red red line like an idea of a red line well it’s more like a guiding principle I wouldn’t put red lines you know and second is for me it’s very important uh during uh negotiations and deal making

In general and not necessarily only with International counterparts but also in everyday politics and governance to its uh microphysics of different agencies and Ministries is uh make sure that um even if you do a compromise in your let’s say actuality of current state of affairs not to reflect it in your

Potentiality in your potentiality in what you can achieve so for me I can get how should I say smaller at present with the certain idea that I can still grow fast and big in the future but one of the paradoxes that you’re struggling with is that uh vuic the the leader of of

Serbia your friend seems seems to have um often very very outrageous confrontational views about the world you know he’s just given an interview on Chinese TV basically saying you’re welcome to Taiwan but he also seems to be very very good at Charming International interlocutors Charming you know American envoys Charming other Europeans what

What do you learn from looking at him how does this work how is he able to say outrageous things in the Serbian press but still keep such extraordinary International support and if if I can add to that isn’t there a danger that you you have managed to make him more

Popular with the people that you might need to help you uh well I don’t think so it could be it’s not me to say uh I believe that um this kind of uh situation also says something about uh uh Western diplomacy as well uh I think that after Russian invasion in

Ukraine uh Belgrade not only President VES they saw that there are two dominant types of diplomats in the west those who will seek appeasement out of fear and those who are going to be utopian thinking that precisely with vuic you’re going to bring Serbia into Camp because uh when you have an

Autocracy so both the appas and utopians though end up acting in the same way paradoxically exactly so in autocracies uh there is a certain magnetism a certain attraction that one person decides it all and foreign policy in autocracy is like children’s bicycle can be turned the

Other way in any minute so I’m going to go into talk to him and I’m going to change his mind so I think this attraction is a trap and sorry so you think he has laid a trap for cuz he is very clever you agree with that he’s smart he’s devious

Yes stre smart this is how he smart he’s smart and you you saying he has laid a trap into which bigger Powers have fallen because in a sense he’s giving them the sense that they can push him where they want him to go but in fact he

Knows where he wants to go yeah but uh let us not forget aliser that uh both his fear and love are towards Moscow way more than towards Brussels and Washington DC so in politics when you have so much power it depends so much on

Who Do You Love most and who do you fear most um and again let’s just finish on that one so who do you love most and who do you fear most well uh I cannot remember who do I fear most but I love most uh Republic of kosova

Yeah our Albania nation and especially Brussels as a double capital and Washington DC and London where we are now okay um in so G give again for international Readers your assessment lessons of of what vu’s objectives are and what uh this type of Serbian nationalist

Wants to do in the Reg in Republic of Suba in Koso and what will happen if they’re not contained uh there is a big similarity between implosion of Soviet Union and uh Yugoslav Federation implosion of Soviet Union brought Uh Russian Federation with tentacles in the form of satellite par

States Belarus uh Crimea South asiaasia and so on and so forth uh disintegration of former Yugoslavia brought a small quadrius not big octopus but small quadrius and Republic SSA is one of the key tentacles of Belgrade again for international Republic of Suba is the Serbian Enclave which is part of

Bosnia yeah it’s like uh Republic Sera is a republic which is not a state within bosnan and heroina which is a state and not a republic you know but but or perhaps the word Babushka could uh also but the key thing for the international listeners is Republican SE

Is not part of Serbia it’s part of Bosnia and in the peace agreements in the 1990s it was very important that the Serbian Community would remain inside Bosnia and one of the pressures is that dodich who is the leader of Republican Sera and indeed the government in Serbia

Actually want to reunify Republic Sera with Serbia yeah uh yes uh that’s what they want uh joining Serbia creating greater Serbia that now they call Serbian world and um and and what does that mean for covo uh it means that uh they don’t hide their Ambitions and they want to

Look dangerous not just be dangerous uh and they want to take the whole of Koso or Northern Koso or what would their objective be uh in the past they wanted whole of Koso there are people who still want that but in terms of their actions they would like partitioning kosova and taking the

Northern part of kosova and uh there are still many daydreaming in Belgrade about that you know fantasy is not reality but influence is reality and and tell us about sorry just before I get to the military confrontations explain a little bit to the audience about what’s been

Happening over the last two years in terms of military confrontations between Serbia and kosova On the Border uh when albanians were expelled in Spring 1999 there was this horseshoe operation now horseshoe exists but it’s just outside of kosova in the form of 48 forward operating bases 28 are military 20 are

Gender media and uh the these people are in high alert it took no other than uh Mr Jake Sullivan to come out and publicly warn Vues to withdraw these thousands of troops and modern technology uh that they’ve got from China and Russia uh in order to have Belgrade stepping back and withdrawing

From the vicinity of our border for example they have Russian airplanes mig29 Chinese system fk3 and Chinese drones uh CH 92a all of this at the vicinity of our border but thanks to Mr Jake Sullivan Belgrade backed up just to go back to compromise so you’ve had this

Situation in recent days where the Dina Serb currency which is used by very small section of your population to to live to pay pensions to pay schools and all sorts of different things and isn’t the given that it’s a very small part of your overall economy isn’t there

Somewhere where actually that is a place where you could compromise in the center and say okay look we’re doing this for these reasons but we understand that it’s going to be very difficult for these people therefore in a sense not make such a big deal of it you haven’t

You just made a massive deal of this and this is what is the latest installment of the Americans and the Europeans saying are these guys really serious about trying to work this thing through in a way that actually builds lasting peace and and again to explain to

International lessers just to to set set the context so in Northern Kosovo there remains a Serbian population and some of that Serbian population want to continue to use Serbian currency continue to use Serbian number plates and this has become a real source of tension because the Prime Minister has been insisting

They’re part of kovo and therefore they should be using kosa number plates kosa currency and I guess Al’s question is why not compromise on this why not bring them on side through compromise yeah first of all this is a decision of central Bank of kosova as a new

Regulation adopted on 27th of December last year I had no idea that this regulation will be taken however I fully support it because because it is directed against illicit activities financing terrorism and formalizing what is written in our constitution uh namely that the only currency as means of payment is Euro we

Did not ban din as such you can own Dinars and pounds and Swiss Franks and dollars but you cannot use them as means of payment according to our Constitution and 33,000 uh elderly serbs who have been retired in recent years are taking pensions also from the kosovar system in

Bank accounts in commercial Banks of kosova 10 of them altogether eight foreign Banks to kovar so they can they have bank accounts so what we’re asking from Serbia because our Central Bank wrote a letter to uh People’s Bank of Serbia to uh find a smooth way of sending those diners to new bank

Accounts and to exchange them for euros as we speak today euro is used in all the shops in four Northern municipalities without any problems precisely because the preparation was going on smoothly on the ground interfered because he saw the success so it’s not that failure on the ground

Caused his reaction on the country okay but listening to you now you’re going to you’re going from here you’re going to go to Belfast and you’re going to meet the first Minister and the deputy first Minister and see how things have have sort of panned out there I kind of feel

Hearing you that we were we having a conversation now with vuch or somebody from the the Serb regime that they’d be giving a a totally different interpretation of events and that’s what it feels a little bit to me like in the days when if you went to Belfast you had

One hard line on this side and one hard line on this side and you couldn’t ever see where they would meet and I just wonder where you see things meeting in the future so that we don’t end up in a situation where we do go back to this

Visit to Belfast has been arranged four months ago and I’m looking very much to go to Belfast I’ve never been there and uh I want to see myself especially situation in two accounts first is uh join Community Police and second is shared education in kosova we don’t have ethnic divisions we have language

Barrier I believe in multilinguism I think that uh human beings are not meant to speak only one language or to live only in one place throughout their lives so basically we’re going to move back and forth like our diaspora does which is onethird of our population and we’re

Going to learn several languages so I I just want to see myself uh reading few books listening a lot of Irish music and Irish movies in a way in a way I want to see I want to see myself how the situation is on the ground so but this

Has nothing to do with dinar and Central Bank of kosova already outlined a 10-steps plan for smooth transition within the 3 months period so this is more or less settled okay but so much of this is about symbols and in Ireland it’s been so much about symbols

Historically so you know we’ve talked on the podcast before about the issue of the Serb car number plates is that again not something that you could say look we can sort this out without making it a big deal if the source of tension would have been uh on the ground from below I

Wouldn’t have been this optimistic all of the tension that we have in kosova is because of the autocrat in Bel and he is nervous and in panic precisely because serbs in kosova they want to integrate because they see how they benefit from integration and they are not 40% of population not 14% of

Population 4% of population and it was 10 and it was 10 in the ’90s yes many left but vast majority of them together with Serbian police and army in summer 1999 I am prime minister of serbs as well they have 10 reserve seats in our Parliament out of 120 Serbian language is official

Language all over kosova at every level of administration Deputy utsp person of kosova is a Serb I appoint serbs in board of directors in publicly owned Enterprises so we cooperate well but precisely this success is increasing tensions caused by Belgrade who is very worried that we’re having success in

Integrating serbs you’ve talked in the past about about Kosovo uh and Albania coming together can you tell us a little bit about that is that something you still believe why did you believe it what is that Vision uh kosova and Albania are two different uh States but not two

Different nations for example sometimes uh you have much more differences uh among albanians within Albania or within kosova then between kosova and Albania and um there has been this uh London conference in 1913 which has divided albanians and back then uh foreign secretary sir Edward gray uh said we did the great

Injustice to Albania in order to preserve European peace and one year after we get the first world war so much of European peace so uh for historical reasons uh there is certain trauma in us being divided however now especially after Russian invasion in Ukraine we see that nation states are not self-

Sustainable they are not self-sufficient they are they self-determined uh yes but we need self-determination toward strengthening both European union and NATO so in this double Capital call Brussels I see the solution so you you no longer believe with of unification with Albania uh I don’t want to exclude

That but uh I won as prime minister on a ticket of jobs and justice jce and to be honest that’s what I do best and can I ask if there is an argument for Kosovo unifying with Albania surely there is a similar argument which dodich would make for Republic sska unifying with

Serbia uh I think that the analogy wouldn’t stand because Republica sska is a creation of genocide of so the bosnak the Muslims did not go back to the places where they have been expelled so uh Republica Sera came out of Dayton whereas kosova was constitutive part of uh uh former

Federation of Yugoslavia we declared independence uh in coordination with Western partners and for the first four years it was supervised Independence in 2010 July 2010 International court of justice ruled that Declaration of Independence of kosova did not violate international law but but but I mean I I

Think I suppose one of the really interesting things is you’re you’re creating a new nation you’re creating a new state based on particular types of identity at a very difficult time in the world because almost everything you say has Echoes with other countries you know the expulsion for example of

Palestinians in the 1940s from what is now the heart of Israel suddenly reminds me of your statements about the expulsion of Bosnia Muslims who then didn’t return to Republic Suba um Notions of reunifying Kosovo and Albania do echo of course with reunifying Republic Suba and Serbia reunifying Crimea and Russia so what

Does it mean to be a nationalist in the modern world and and how can one tell the difference between good nationalism bad nationalism difference rightwing nationalism left wi nationalism well I think uh one of the measurements uh would be whether uh your nationalistic attitude is for Liberation towards equality with other nations or

You want territorial expansion hegemony and domination over others so you have to justify your nationalism in terms of Liberation because uh we can say that charl deal France Fon and uh Marie Le Pen they are both nationalists but if you put them in the same basket you

Couldn’t make a bigger mistake so I think that we have to see it in terms of National Liberation struggle and for the sake of uh equality in order to listen to The legitimization Narrative of that uh nationalism do you not worry that if you don’t manage to improve relations with

Belgrade that the whole Vision that several of the leaders in that region have to try to work towards the European union membership of the European Union that that’s just going to go for a generation well uh I believe all of the Balkans should join European Union faster sooner definitely better but it’s

But it can’t happen at the moment in part because of the difficulties in the relationships yes but one of the reasons why it is not going to happen soon is because the support for EU in Serbia fell to 35% 20 years ago when Zoran jinit was alive as prime minister of Serbia

Student of uran habas Western oriented then support for uh EU was 75% now it fell to 35% EU cannot impose inclusion of your country so both Russian Federation and European Union have history of enlargement but uh European Union enlarges peacefully and Russian Federation violently so you cannot join

Into EU if you don’t want to join into EU so there are needed Democratic changes in Serbia that’s why I think that groundbreaking moment is uh Russian aggression in Ukraine because the key values nothing of also identity building are the values the foundational values of Council of Europe namely democracy

Rule of law and human rights which brings me I think to to you joining the Council of Europe and the power that that could have diplomatically for shaping you and I think a second related question which is again explaining to listeners how Kosovo and Serbia and other countries joining the European Union

Will solve so many many of the political and economic problems and why this needs to be a priority for Europe uh you join European Union in order to also contribute not benefit so I think that we have to prepare to contribute this is very important European Union should be

Homegrown yet not self-made we need help but it should be built within each country and uh to that end uh I think that the values of uh European Union are very important uh market economy uh then uh qualitative education uh human rights minority rights uh fight against corruption uh

Good neighborly relations and so on and so forth so I think that uh uh yes values and interests are not the same thing but they cannot be decoupled so it is very important to have these vales being built uh within our system and society and in particular efficient efficient professional

Administration and we had Eddie rmer on the podcast a few months ago and you’re both leaders of small countries who’ve got a kind of disproportionate profile in a way for the countries that that you lead but do you do you see yourselves as as partners or do you see yourselves as

Rivals for Albanian leadership in the world Ian how is how does that relationship work all of these two plus brothers so partners and Rivals and brothers three in one and what’s the but even there you’ve had because the the open Boron initiative is is sort of that’s that’s not progressed in the way

That they wanted it to so at every stage you you have this you know you you you you the word that people keep coming back to is kind of you know knows his own mind but very uncompromising and never it’s never quite clear where it’s going to end uh well uh we’re both

Social Democrats we agree on so many issues uh most of the time but then when we disagree that makes news uh we do not agree regarding open Balkans in my view uh we need European Balkans European balans is open enough whereas open Balkans is not European enough because it’s so do ser Serb

Dominated and it’s like open Balkans open to whom to do what you know it’s like open to Russian Federation because Serbia has great relations with both uh Vladimir Putin and shiin ping so if you enter with Serbia with the idea of open Balkans Serbia being open to Russia and

China that’s not okay um my final question uh we are in a world now in which uh the government of Armenia has moved against aan where Russia’s moved against Ukraine where the rhetoric coming from Belgrade implies that there is a increased possibility of another conflict in the

Balkans what would this mean if this happened God forbid but if this were to happen what do you think this would mean for Europe and the international order uh when uh us um intervened in Iraq I remember very well some of the Serbian media writing that if us goes after

Iran that will be our historical window of opportunity to go back to kosov now recently president of Serbia has been quoting uh president aliev in aeran that they have been waiting for 27 years to do what they’ve done so my question is should we count 27 years from 1999 which

Makes 2026 a dangerous year for us or should we count from now so in 2050 new attack of Serbia we could be quite relaxed I think this idea of waiting historical window of opportunity is a very problematic thing for security architecture of the Balkans and here I

Think we can be saved by building our own capabilities and capacities but also Al by joining NATO joining NATO and EU is also a security thing now not just a matter of citizens well-being my final question relates to the American presidential elections so I mentioned that you’ve had words with Anthony

Blinken but you really had words with the whole Trump Administration um so how all the things that we’ve been talking about what is the implication for them of either of Biden second term or a trump second term by winning the election in November uh prior to uh last elections

In us I publicly supported uh President Joe Biden uh I think that on one level whoever wins in us kosova will continue to be independent Sovereign Democratic Republic in the eyes of Washington DC however uh things are changing fast and people are worried in uh the case of uh next

Elections is difficult to predict now however I believe that kosova and us will continue to have uh excellent relations we have them as indispensable Ally in terms of uh defending and securing our country and uh maybe we spent a bit too much time in thinking

Who’s going to win in us uh uh bearing in mind a quote by famous American filmmaker David Lynch on uh uh president Trump he said something to paraphrase him as follows uh you cannot combat him in an intelligent way so uh basically you may spend a lot of time in thinking

Which will not pay back but you must the if I read that right I mean you must have a you’ve just been talking about the the vision of Kosovo being part of NATO but one of the big implications of trump beating Biden again is the future of NATO uh we have

Already fulfilled 2% criteria I have doubled uh support for uh military in kosova in terms of military equipment and also trainings and we have for example Cadets uh in sanur Military acade Academy here and uh in this respect uh the critique of uh former president Trump was not in relation to

Kosova but to some other European countries okay but I note that you’re not this time saying he would support Joe Biden well you know it goes without saying in terms that I’m a Social Democrat I work very much with Democratic uh uh party of us with ndi in

Kosova but then then again not only with us but also within EU I have to meet so many presidents and prime ministers who are from rightwing parties center right and right-wing parties well thanks for coming to talk to us have a good time in Northern Ireland and in Dublin and uh

We’ll keep in touch thank you very much great great privilege to see you again and thank you for your time thank you very much for having me and for this great opportunity thank you I I thought that was fascinating I think it’s um I think it’s really difficult getting

Across the tension there which is that this is a man with a reputation as being very uncompromising and difficult but of course in person Charming very Charming very thoughtful good words very highly intellectual and and of course I feel deep sympathy for him and one of the

Things we didn’t talk about is that he’s got a really impressive reputation on anti-corruption and KOST is not an easy place on that and even his greatest enemies say that he’s had a really clean record in government which is very very unusual well especially as one of the first things he

Did when he became prime minister was to cut the pay of all of them um no I I think he’s look I know a lot of people in Kosovo and there’s obviously he’s got you know he won election big time he’s got a lot of supporters but I probably

Know more of his nons supporters and um they they said exactly what you just said he’s he’s incredibly Charming he’s he’s very clear about who and what he is and what he believes um and but I did have that very strong feeling maybe it’s because he just told us before we started recording

He was going to Belfast I just had that very strong feeling that it was like it was like talking to a unionist before talking to a nationalist and then we talked to the Nationalist and if you imagine if we’d have had him and then vuic we’re getting completely different

Stories of the versions of the same story yes but he’s but this interes that thing about the compromising star he really because you know I I wasn’t downplaying it in recent weeks he’s had France Germany Brussels senior people in Washington including blinken coming out and saying look you know our patience isn’t going

To be here forever you know if you’re going to be a reliable friend we if you want us to be a reliable friend you’ve got to be a reliable friend back and yet there was no give there was there no and I think he must feel at some fundamental

Level that the compromises that are being forced on him cuz of course you can imagine what international diplomats are saying is we don’t want a war between Kasa and Serbia so for goodness sake sort out the bloody number license plates or din let’s have some compromise here but his view is

That he is in the right there is a constitution there are agreements there’s a law and he’s buggered if he’s going to make these kinds of compromises which he thinks are just run by a autocratic nationalist regime in Serbia just trying to cause trouble and it’s very difficult to know as a diplomat

When compromises are necessary and when they’re unnecessary on the Q&A recently we had that question about whether there shouldn’t be more straightforward diplomacy where people sort of say what they’re think now he wasn’t repeating some of the things that he said about these other powers but nor was he

Resiling and he was clear that he was perfectly happy to have good relations but he wasn’t going to move on things that he wouldn’t move on I didn’t really understand what he was saying about not compromising in the center I didn’t really well I think what he means is

That he has Central beliefs which won’t be compromised on there’s a core to him which won’t be Touch won’t be touched on I thought he meant he was saying that you know you might think the best way to negotiate start here and start there and try and bring people together in the

Middle but he’s not no I think he has an indestructible call he doesn’t want to tou I also wonder whether I mean he’s a very as you say very thoughtful intellectual politician but there must be something that actually works for a politician about being uncompromised I

Mean we’re in an age where people are pretty fed up with politic also you touched on the nationalism thing that you know he is a nationalist and he he he he he he St Stokes the nationalism within Kosovo and the feel they’re surrounded by enemies and they’ll quite

Like the fact he’s not compromising he’ll get a lot of votes from people saying I supect standing up to them your because he’s grow he’s he’s he’s he’s kind of he started you know four five four five elections ago and you know lose lose lose then he sort of won for a

Bit then he was out again then he’s back in but actually fascinating because the irony is that the the the most famous previous leader of kaso hashin Tachi who was loved by the International Community um is now on trial for for war crimes as

In prison in the ha had a much less good reputation on corruption and the sort of cleaner more respectable one is the one that the International Community find difficult I I I I should say I think it is incredible that he’s being kept in this in the ha without any knowledge as

To when this whole thing is going to get resolved um but yeah it’s uh no he’s so I one of these people who who I know who I his brains I picked ahead of it said um he said imagine you’re dealing with somebody that’s kind of a bit Jeremy

Corbin and a bit Jean Luke melona I don’t exactly know what he meant by that he didn’t mean the hard left thing I think he is a sort of he’s quite leftwing but he’s a Social Democrat but I think he meant absolutely I’ve Got My Views I don’t move off

Them a child of two Engineers very kind of black and white black and white view what anyway it was it was great and thank you for that great