18/3/2005
Progress Towards Forming New Government In Kosovo

Following the recent resignation of Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj, who surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal, steps to form a new government this week were welcomed by Secretary General Kofi Annan's Special Representative to Kosovo, Søren Jessen-Petersen.

“For a Kosovo that is getting ready for status discussions, it is extremely important that we see the democratic institutions functioning as we expect in a democracy, in full accordance with the Constitutional principles,” he said after meeting with the province’s ethnic Albanian president, Ibrahim Rugova.

The UN has run Kosovo since the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid grave human rights abuses in the fighting between Serbs and Albanians.