Daily Media Monitoring Summary: Saturday 8 December, 2001

**RUGOVA DEMANDS THREE LEADING POSTS FOR LDK, OFFERS FIVE MINISTRIES FOR PDK AND AAK (1)** COVIC RECOMMENDS KOSOVO SERBS NOT TO ENTER KOSOVO INSTITUTIONS WITHOUT AGREEING FIRST WITH BELGRADE (2) ALBIN KURTI, FORMER STUDENT LEADER RELEASED FROM PRISON (3)**YUGOSLAVIA DECLARES 18,000 PASSPORTS ISSUED IN KOSOVO INVALID (4)**
 

All dailies carried front-page reports on the meeting between LDK leader Ibrahim Rugova, PDK leader Hashim Thaçi and Ramush Haradinaj held yesterday at the US Office in Prishtina.

In its report titled "The meeting of three leaders ends without agreement and smiles," Koha Ditore said that all three leaders said "yes" to co-governance and that they understood that they must sit together and move toward a new political process called co-governance. However, the posts of the parties in the new government were not defined yet.

On the other hand, quoting some sources, Zëri reports that Rugova had asked for the LDK to keep the three leading posts in the government. From an overall of seven ministries, Rugova offered four ministries to the PDK, and one ministry to the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo. Based on the same sources, Thaçi and Haradinaj didn't agree with Rugova's proposal, and asked first to allocate the three leading posts, and then open the debate on the ministries and other bodies.

Zëri on page one carried a column by its editor-in-chief Blerim Shala, in which he wrote that there were two problems in the meeting between Rugova, Thaçi and Haradinaj.

The first problem is linked to the fact that there are only two days left until the opening session of the Kosovo Assembly, and the second is related to the belief of each leader that the other person should make concessions first.

The game should be played with open cards and there can be no successful bluff: everyone knows the cards of the other player. In fact, the main question is what needs to be achieved in the first session of the Kosovo Parliament? If there is a real goal to hold a solemn meeting, then there is no need to be hasty. If there are goals to start the genuine work of the assembly, then the three leaders, along with their expert groups should hold a 24-hour negotiations session in order to reach an agreement about the allocation of the powers. In this aspect, they should also have in mind that they are not in Rambouillet and that the role of western diplomats can hardly go beyond the "services of good will".

There is also the third possibility: we could witness the session of the Kosovo Parliament without an agreement, and with the idea that the process of posts allocation would be launched that day. In that case, it is not difficult to imagine what would happen in the relations between the leaders of the three Kosovar main political parties.
 

(2) Nebojsa Covic, chief of the FRY Coordination Center in Kosovo, accused the international mission in Kosovo for "trying to install factions within the Serb national corps in Kosovo", Zëri reports. Covic said that for the moment there are no indications that the coalition Povratak will enter in a coalition with any Albanian party in the Kosovar Parliament.

Commenting on the pressures of the international community on Kosovo Serbs to join the Kosovo institutions, Covic emphasized that no Serb can hastily enter the above- mentioned bodies, and appealed to the Serbs to wait for the joint rules established by Belgrade and UNMIK.


(3) "I asked no one to pardon me, nor to offer me amnesty, because in order to do so I had to be guilty. I only asked for justice, but Serbia is doing the opposite," said Albin Kurti, after being released yesterday from a prison in Serbia. Kurti was arrested in 1999. He was the leader of Independent Union of Prishtina University Students and organized demonstrations against Milosevic's regime, all dailies report. 


(4) The FRY Ministry of Interior Affairs declared 18,000 Yugoslav passports issued in Kosovo by the Yugoslav office in Prishtina invalid, officials of the Macedonian Ministry of Interior told Kosovalive. A senior official of the Macedonian Ministry told the news agency that the law enforcement authorities were ordered to confiscate the passports which have been declared invalid by the FRY and turn back their owners to Kosovo.