Pristina - The former rebel leader Hashim Thaci on Saturday
won parliamentary elections in the province on a promise of
independence made to his compatriots, the majority Kosovo Albanians.
Thaci, 39, was an ardent supporter of Kosovo's independence even
as a history student in Pristina and an emigrant to Switzerland in
the early 1990s, where he joined the Albanian political network.
According to Serbian sources, he passed military training in
Albania in 1993 and has been one of the founding members and
commanders of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army UCK, under the nom de
guerre 'Snake' that same year.
Other sources say that he was in charge of securing financing,
recruiting and armament for UCK. Serbia sentenced him to 10 years in
prison and has placed an international arrest warrant on him in
connection with the 1993 killing of three police officers in Kosovo.
He was detained once, in 2003 in Hungary, on a Yugoslav arrest
warrant, but was quickly released after UN authorities in Kosovo
intervened. At the time, he was already the opposition leader in the
province.
Thaci was named the political leader of UCK in 1999 and he took
part in the Kosovo peace talks in Rambouillet, France, which
collapsed and failed to avert a crackdown on Albanians in Kosovo and
a NATO intervention against Yugoslavia.
While the war in Kosovo raged, mostly Albanians proclaimed Thaci
prime minister in exile of the province.
He emerged as a full-fledged political leader, heading his own
Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), after NATO ousted Serbian security
forces from Kosovo in mid-1999, paving the way for a UN
administration that has governed it since.
The PDK is considered the successor of UCK's political structures.
In Saturday's elections, he and PDK broke the previously
undisputed hold of the rival Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) on
power. LDK was weakened by the death of its iconic leader Ibrahim
Rugova in 2006 and by the unfulfilled promise of quick independence.
Thaci, who was among the first to turn his back on Rugova's more
moderate views, has as a politician relentlessly pushed for Kosovo's
independence and was the mover of initiatives for the transfer of
more authority from the UN to provincial authorities.
Though the differences among Kosovo Albanian politicians in terms
of foreign policy are minimal, Thaci is widely considered the 'US
man' in Pristina, owing to his close ties with Washington officials
since the days of Rambouillet.
Immediately after declaring election victory early Sunday morning,
Thaci repeated his promise of independence to the Albanians, who make
up 90 per cent of the 2.1 million Kosovars.
'A new era is starting. The citizens of Kosovo have sent a message
to the world that we are a democratic country and society,' Thaci
said. 'But the strongest message was that Kosovo is ready for its
independence and its freedom.'
He also stretched a hand out to the Serbs, who comprehensively
boycotted the elections in protest at Kosovo's slide to independence,
and who are in the near future certain not to take the hand offered
by Thaci or any other Albanian leader.
'I want to address this message and tell those who didn't vote for
us, that I will be a prime minister of everyone, working for the
welfare of everyone,' Thaci said. 'I will also be the prime minister
of the minorities.'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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