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Pristina, February 12 2011 NOA – Kosovo’s caretaker Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said on Friday he had secured enough support to put together a coalition government two months after general elections. Thaci’s PDK party, which won 32 percent of votes, turned to the fifth largest party and ethnic minorities after three other leading parties said they would not govern with Thaci. The first session of the new parliament will be held on Feb. 24. “We have secured the necessary majority to create new institutions; the quality of the institutions does not depend on numbers but how efficiently the job is done,” Thaci told a news conference after meeting a visiting US diplomat. Thaci said his party would join in the 120-seat parliament with the AKR (The New Kosovo Alliance), the Ibrahim Rugova list and other, ethnic minority parties.
The second, third and fourth largest parties have said they will not govern with Thaci, whom they blame for high levels of crime and corruption, a poor economy and other problems. Political stalemate has already delayed the start of Kosovo’s talks with Serbia, which does not recognise Pristina’s independence but has agreed to discuss practicalities of coexistence such as cross-border trade and transport. Thaci said the new government’s first decision would be to start a dialogue with Serbia, which withdrew its forces in 1999 after a NATO bombing campaign to stop them attacking civilians during an insurgency by Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority.
e.t/NOA
