The sun has succeeded the rain on the Paseo del Prado in Madrid when the Prime Minister of Kosovo goes through it in a taxi, on his way to a discreet meeting with former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. The socialist who governs the territory that separated from Serbia and the socialist who gave the order to bomb Belgrade to stop the punishment have remained in the Prado Museum. On the way, the 47-year-old Balkan politician observes the Velázquez rays of light that slip through the trees, declared World Heritage Sites by Unesco. He then finds out that, at the end of the walk, the City Council has surrounded Cibeles with Ukrainian flags. “I just got here, I hadn’t seen him,” he says. I think Putin no longer finds the way out. He needs to lose the war, and together we are going to help him& rdquor ;, he ironizes. It is the first time he has set foot in Spain Albin Kurti, leader of a country that the state he is visiting does not recognize. He went to Madrid this weekend for the congress of the Socialist International (IS) and, incidentally, say hello to Pedro Sanchez. President of a party with an unequivocal name, Vetëvendosje (Self-Determination)It’s not so long ago that Kurti was a young activist for independence and fusion with Albania. Today he faces a broad conservative opposition and an administrative apparatus riddled with corruption to which he has declared war; and in favor, the youth vote, that of women and that of a large diaspora that, avoiding the problems of the local postal service, took out of their pockets the 40 euros that it costs to send each vote from abroad to Pristina by DHL. “We participated in the SI meeting in Geneva, and in Tel Aviv and Ramallah, and in Brussels… It seems very valuable to me to come here. I have always been attracted to come to Spain & rdquor ;, he says. She was able to speak briefly with Sánchez at the meeting of the European socialists in Berlin. Kurti has good relationship with the Portuguese Antonio Costaand Costa has a good relationship with its Iberian neighbor, and that is where the first contact was forged.
– I understand that in the figure of Albin Kurti, independence is inseparable from social concern. Are we facing a nationalist or a social democrat?
– I am a European social democrat, but at the same time I want the state of Kosovo to become stronger and stronger. The self-determination that we have always wanted has been a liberating self-determination. It is not about a self-determination to establish a hegemony, an egotistical self-determination, only to be apart. It was a self-determination against repression, because in the Yugoslav federation we were the poorest and the most repressed. We didn’t want to separate because we were the richest, but because we were the poorest. My soul is a social democrat, and our self-determination was anti-colonialist.
– Do you understand the reasons why Spain has not recognized Kosovo?
– I regret that Spain is in the minority of EU and NATO countries that do not recognize Kosovo. Of 30 NATO states, four do not recognize us, including Spain. And in the EU only five do not recognize us, among them Spain, but Spain is the largest state that does not recognize us. I think this non-recognition comes from a lack of knowledge of the situation. When we declared our independence, I don’t know which of the Spanish politicians would formulate erroneous analogies with the case of Kosovo.
– What do you mean?
– From what we have been told, then there was a concern in Spain that the independence of Kosovo could serve as a precedent for certain Spanish regions that wanted to separate. I think the Albanian writer Ismail Kadareby winning the Prince of
“If any Spanish politician sees similarities between Kosovo and Catalonia, Madrid would not have to see itself as Belgrade”
Asturias, gave the best argument why Spain should recognize Kosovo: NATO intervened in Kosovo in the spring of 1999 to stop the genocide perpetrated by the regime of solobodan milosevic. And if any Spanish politician sees similarities between Kosovo and Catalonia or any other part of Spain, Madrid would not have to see itself as Belgrade. In the spring of 1999 alone, more than 10,000 unarmed civilians were killed in Kosovo. More than 10% were children. 20,000 women were raped. And 860,000 Kosovo Albanians were deported. In the Hague Court it was shown that this was a premeditated operation, known as Operation Horseshoe. Our self-determination, our independence, runs counter to those facts. So I don’t know where you can find analogies, similarities, in Spain. The standard of living in Kosovo has always been several times lower than in the rest of the Yugoslav federation. In 1979, the time when standards of living in the former Yugoslavia were closest to one another, the difference between the richest, Slovenia, and Kosovo was seven to one. In the same socialist state! Raw materials were extracted from Kosovo, and factories were in Serbia and other parts of Yugoslavia. We were the miners, and they were the financiers.
– In Catalonia there was a unilateral declaration of independence, as in Kosovo…
–In the Kosovo-Serbia relationship, Spain cannot be reflected in any of the parties.
– Or Catalonia?
-Either. It’s that he has nothing to do with it.
-I suppose you saw the events in Catalonia in the fall of 2017 from Pristina. What was your opinion?
-What we did not like was the vision of the police hitting. That should not have been so. It left us confused, because, at the same time, Spain
Of what was happening in Catalonia in the fall of 2017, “what we didn’t like was the vision of the police hitting”
It is a European democratic country. We seek self-determination to be equal to the rest, and what happened was violent, undemocratic. Serbia is still an autocratic country today; the same party always wins the elections; they have only had two years of democracy under Zoran Dindic (the mayor of Belgrade who overthrew Milosevic and who was assassinated when he ruled the country, in March 2003). They murdered their greatest democrat, and in this century, not in the past. For this reason, when we speak of self-determination, we speak of self-determination of an aggressor. For us it was something incomprehensible that in a country like Spain this could not be decided through dialogue, with democratic measures and with the participation of the EU.
Is that what you think now?
-Do you know what I’m telling you? The important thing is that self-determination is democratic and that it comes from below, not from above. In 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, they challenged us, Russophiles told me: “If the citizens of Crimea are voting, they want to separate from Ukraine and go with Russia, why don’t you support them? & rdquor; And what I could not accept is that the ballot boxes were carried by Russian soldiers. It was a remote-controlled self-determination from Moscow, and for us that is not a self-determination as it should be, because it is imposed from above. What has been lacking in Kosovo to create a feeling of solidarity with Catalonia is that we see it as a rich region and, apart from the day of the referendum, we did not see police violence, not so as to give us the impression that this was a fight for human rights.
-Do you mean to say that the Kosovar independence movement is liberating of the poor, and that of Catalonia an independence movement that evades the rich?
-Where there is state violence, it can be considered as liberating. I understand that, within the European Union, if there are separations they must be like the model of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
-Yeah, but does Catalonia have the right to self-determination?
-I can’t comment on that because I’m not so familiar with the matter. In any case, for me it must be a result of negotiations, of conversations, between Madrid and Barcelona.
-If you like, we can leave the Catalan obsession…
-Yes please.
-… to ask him about this trip. Is it not the embryo of recognition by Spain of Kosovo?
-I am prepared to debate, to collaborate and speak with all those who can help Spain to recognize us, because it is decisive for our entry into the EU and NATO. Spain is a determining factor for us.
-And has Pedro Sánchez winked at you?-Our meeting has been very cordial because we belong to the same political family, but I cannot say that anything has progressed, for the moment. What I need from Pedro Sánchez in first grade is support for our application to enter the Council of
“Albania is in NATO, we want to enter too: we are in constant danger because of Serbia’s strong relations with Russia”
Europe. They just kicked out Russia… Now it’s time for Kosovo to enter. And also to participate as allies in NATO. Preparing for that, we have raised the country’s military budget. We are already at 1.5 of GDP. And we have participated in Operation ‘Defender Europe’ last year with 330 soldiers. It is the largest NATO operation in Eastern Europe, from the Baltic to the Balkans. And there will be another edition in 2023 with Kosovar participation…
– Do you remember the young Albin Kurti, the one who advocated uniting Kosovo with Albania? Where is that twenty-something?
-For more than a century we have a problem with Serbia, and we have it as a whole of the Albanian nation. Kosovo and Albania are not two different nations, but two different states, same language, same cultural extraction… and Albania is in NATO, we want to join too: we are in constant danger because of Serbia’s strong relations with Russia.
-Kosovar Serbs from the north use Serbian license plates on their cars, and that has caused a crisis that has destabilized their country, but it seems that a solution is coming. Has the high representative of the EU, Josep Borrell, played his role?
-I think that perhaps Mr. Borrell is moving away from his work of representation, from the European solution advocated by France and Germany. I believe that a prime minister should not focus on matters as technical as this issue of registration fees. And Mr Borrell should push for a real bilateral agreement with Serbia, instead of running around with this issue.
– How much of Russian destabilization is there in the growing concern that is seen again in the Balkans?
-Sputnik TV’s regional center for the Balkans is in Belgrade. They also have an organization, which they call the Russian Humanitarian Center, in Nis, 160 kilometers from Pristina. They call it a “humanitarian center”, and it is a rather cynical way of calling it, as if to say: “If the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999 was humanitarian, ours is too& rdquor ;. Now Putin does not stop naming us. He wants Kosovo to be a failed state. He means that the Western intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a failure, and that Kosovo has been a temporary success, which will end up being a failure as well. He loses his dream that Kosovo will be more and more successful. We have risen 17 positions on the Transparency International list for our fight against corruption.
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-There was an international court to try Milosevic and his warlords. Will there be another to judge Putin and his people?
Yes, there has to be a court. We cannot leave that up to the courts in Ukraine, let alone those in Russia.