The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 65. Albin Kurti, Prime Minister of Kosovo: Vladimir Putin, surviving prison, and Serbia

Episode Date: March 18, 2024

How did peace come to the Balkans? What was it like to be a political prisoner? Is Serbia more allied with the West, or with Putin? Rory and Alastair are joined by the Prime Minister of Kosovo, Albin Kurti, to discuss all this and more. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP ELECTION TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [e-mail] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's the restispolitics.com. Welcome to Restis Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. And we are about to interview another serving prime minister in this case, the Prime Minister of Kosovo. And just to set it in context, Kosovo is a small country. It's a little bit larger geographically than Cumbria, considerably smaller than Yorkshire, got a population about 1.7 million people.

And it was right at the heart of the key wars of the 1990s, because as former Yugoslavia began to disintegrate Kosovo, which was part of Serbia, but which had a predominantly Albanian and traditionally Muslim. population, compared to Serbia, which had a predominantly ethnically Serbian and Serbian Orthodox population, began to come under increasing pressure from Milosevic, the leader of Serbia. Ethnic cleansing took place, and the United Kingdom, the US and others intervened on behalf of Kosovo, drove back the Serbian forces and created an autonomous Kosovo, which was eventually recognized by many but not all the countries in the world. So in the European Union, for example, Kosovo is absolutely recognized as an independent state

by Britain, France and Germany, but countries like Greece continue Cyprus, continue Spain, continue to hold out against recognition. And that tells you a lot about nationalism, changing borders. Obviously, the reason Spain doesn't recognize it is they're worried about Catalonia breaking away. But it is also really relevant to listeners,

today because we are now at one of the most dangerous situations that we've had in the Balkans since Alistair was very closely involved in the Kosovo war in 1999, 2000, because we have a nationalist leader in Serbia making significant threats on behalf of the small Serbian population that still exist in Koso, who he believes are being discriminated against and stories of pogroms and attacks on untrue stories being put in the Serbian newspaper to whip up the possibility of a war. So we're talking to a prime minister of a very interesting tiny country that was the centre of one of the greatest interventions in the 1990s, touched Alice's life, touched my life, because I was there too at that time as the British diplomat and maybe on the verge of another

European conflict. Over to you, Alistair. I think conflict overstates it right now, but I think it is pretty tense. And Albin-Corty at the time was a young student who ended up being imprisoned, eventually sentenced for kind of trumped-up terrorism charges and sentenced to 15 years, got out after a couple of years once a philosopher's was gone, and then became a politician, but he's a sort of self-style philosopher politician. He's quite an intellectual, very, very well-read, but I think we are in a situation at the moment where with him as prime minister and it took him five elections I think before he became prime minister and he's got himself in a position as we'll put to him

where a lot of the kind of powers that Kosovo was dependent upon then that he's slightly at risk of alienating them the Americans have been quite critical of some of his positions the European Union has been quite critical he is absolutely adamant that President Vutritchitch in Serbia is to blame for all the stuff that's going on and likewise Vuchis says he's to blame and he is convinced as well that Vutrij is essentially is way more pro-Russian than pro-Western and yet the West continues to believe that they can sort of put him over into a better position. So he's an interesting guy, as you say, very, very interesting country and one whose significance is

way bigger than its geographical size or population. And something that I think has become even more relevant at a time when Azerbaijan has attacked Nagorno-Karabakh, when Russia is going after Ukraine, these stories about old nationalisms and the potential for conflict becomes much more relevant today. So here we go, Albin-Kirte, Kosovo Prime Minister. So thanks for being here. And I wonder if we could just start with that part of your life when you were a young protester. First of all, what your background was, what family you came from, and what made you this student activist, who became very, very high profile and clearly somebody of concern to the Yugoslav authorities.

Thank you very much for having me. I was born in Pristina. My father comes from a village nearby Ulchen in Montenegro. He came to Pristina in 1963 to study in the Faculty of Mechanics. Pristina University, and there he met my mother. My mother comes from a village nearby Pristina. And both my parents being engineers, my mother, engineer of construction, I was very much into maths as a pupil, as a student, and I believed very much in science, natural sciences. But ultimately, being so much

preoccupied with solving problems in mathematics that led me to analytic philosophy and afterwards I crossed the Lamontch from the other direction

that some people do these days into continental philosophy and then I was very much interested in social sciences and as a student I got socially and politically active during the occupation of Kosovo. Can we perhaps interrupt for a second? So you went from being interested in the Anglo-American philosophers,

kind of Locke-Barkly Hume, and then you got into continental Derrida and these kind of people? Yes, I was very much into Russell, Frege, Wittgenstein, Kantor, and so on. And then I was more interested about the linguistic turn, you know, the late Wittgenstein in contrast to the early one, and got in touch with the French philosophy of second half of 20th century. And this was all when you were studying in Kosovo? Yes, this was in my, like, very early 20s.

And can I just sort of, for international listeners, paint a picture of Kosovo's development within Serbia. I mean, both Alastair and I worked briefly in Kosovo. I was the British representative in Montenegro. just after the Kosovo war. And indeed, as you've reminded me, we met 20 years ago when you were beginning your career in the nonprofit that became a party. But can you bring to life what kind of place Kosovo was in the 1960s?

You say your mother came from a village. How developed was it? How wealthy was it? How many Kosovo Albanians were engineers? What was the social structure? What was the economic structure in the 1960s when your parents were growing up? In 1966 is a very decisive year because back then, the most notorious Serbian politician in Communist Party of Yugoslavia, Alexander Rankovich, was purged in Breone Plenum by

Tito, who was the undisputed leader of former Yugoslavia, and bit by bit, autonomy of Kosovo started to increase. We got first university. We got permission to use Albanian flag to learn and teach in our language. And premise, I'm so sorry, but again, for internationalists, the key point is that a lot of the population of Kosovo, which was then part of Yugoslavia and part of Serbia, was Albanian as opposed to Serbian. And traditionally, I would have thought in religious terms, Muslim as opposed to Serbian Orthodox. And therefore, there were ethnic and religious differences beginning to emerge between the majority of the population of Kosovo and the population of Serbia. Albanians were vast majority in Kosovo throughout the 20th century.

Nowadays, Albanians are 93%, Serbs are 4%, but Serbs used to be around 10% in the 20th century. And there was not much of ethnic division or language barrier as much as hegemony from Belgrade, which wanted to instrumentalize differences in order to dominate over former Yugoslavia. So I believe that former Yugoslavia was both created at the onset of 20th century and destroyed by the end of of 20th century with the same goal to create greater Serbia. And this has nothing to do with ethnicity. And when you were a student and involved in protest and activism, how difficult was that to do? You ended up in jail. You ended up being pretty badly beaten. Was that something that you just assumed would happen because of the kind of repressive nature of the regime? As I said, I was very much

into thinking. I loved ideas and thinking, but apart hiding, yes. Apart. Part high during the 90s when I was student of electrotechnics doing hard science, became a bit absurd and futile due to repression of Milosevic regime. So you can do some very complicated problem solving in maths, in formal mathematics. But nonetheless, when you go out from your apartment, you have a policeman who is arrogant and violent towards you. So I started to get organized with others. So the social aspect of life was in stark contradiction with my thinking as a student. And Pramist, what was the shift then from Tito's government to Milosevic's government? And what did that mean for the way the population in Kosovo was treated?

What did you see? What were the changes that were beginning to happen in the 90s? I think that the Belgrade political elite had long time ago a plan how to dominate and centralize Yugoslavia. But of course, with the death of Tito, they accelerated that plan. And they started by abolishment of the autonomy of Kosovo, which was not a republic, but yet a constitutive element of former Federation of Yugoslavia. And then they were hoping that by destroying Yugoslavia, they're going to get at least half of it. And Kosovo would be included there for sure. So they didn't hesitate to do ethnic cleansing and genocide.

as we know. When did you realize that actually their policy was one of ethnic cleansing? When did that, when did that become clear to people there? And my second question on that is, was there ever a point at which you felt that the rest of the world kind of wouldn't care? When they started the colonization of Yugoslavia with Serbs, they used to say, whatever a Serb lives, there is Serbia. That was a century ago. By the end of 20th century, they started to say, whatever there is a Serbian grave, there is Yugoslavia. And that was a hint that basically they're going to die for what they believe, even though that's shavanistic, nationalistic, and so on and so forth. So Milosevic speeches and what we have seen on the ground, for example, expulsion of Albanians from hospitals, from factories,

from schools and university, made it clear that they don't want us there. They want our land without us. One of the things that was a theme, I guess, is the Serbs were making claims about the population in Kosovo in the Middle Ages. You know, what was happening in the 1300s and using that as part of their narrative about why Kosovo should be part of Serbia. When you look around the world, when you look at Russia's claims on Ukraine, when you look at the way that Israelis or Palestinians speak about their national rights within the Middle East, can you see echoes in your mind of these. types of historical national claims? Definitely. Just like Milosevic believed that, for example, Yugoslavia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are artificial states. Likewise today, despotic President Putin believes that Ukraine is an artificial state. So he goes for the natural dismantling of something which he considers artificial.

On the other hand, the idea of revisionism and nostalgia for golden age, Peter the Great, in 18th century, also is an echo of Milosevic recalling greater Serbia in medieval times. But these are just narrative tools for hegemony of discourse and for mobilization of police and military. When the war was at its height, what were you actually doing at that point? What I got politically active in Students' Union back then with protests and demonstrations, very soon it became clear that Kosovo did not save itself from the war with, let's say, peaceful, passive resistance. War is unavoidable with Milosevic.

And back then in 1998, I joined Adam Demachi, who was like Aura Mandela. He was 28 years in prison. And he was the political representative of Kosovo Liberation Army. I worked as his secretary-translator assistant. I was his closest person in Kosovo Liberation Army in Pristina. And when Milosevic was defeated, did you? know at that point that you that you wanted to become a politician? Does you feel that politics was the you were going to go down? I always considered myself a political activist. So I never thought

that I will ever become member of parliament, let alone prime minister. So these are all consequences of my actions and circumstances, but never my goal. And you set up a movement called the self-determination movement, which morphed into the party that eventually got you into the position you're in now. What is self-determination in the modern age? How would you define that? Self-determination is a principle of collective freedom of people, is a democratic thing, which means that comes from below, not from above. Because we have heard sayings from Kremlin that in Crimea there was a referendum, there was a self-determination, but we have seen Russian soldiers carrying out ballot boxes. So self-dimination is not something which comes from above,

but from below. And in this sense, I believe, is one of the main driving forces for freedom of people in 20th century, and it might continue in this century as well. But don't you see that some people might look at self-determination in a place like Kosovo, very small, surrounded by all sorts of challenges, particularly Serbia, and is to some extent dependent upon alliances, particularly with the United States, with the European Union, so that self-determination, when you do require support, you require allies around the world. And, you know, I get the feeling that you don't worry too much about that. You don't worry so much about the alliances. You're not scared of upsetting people. And, you know, in recent week, just in recent,

and days with the whole issue of the Dina, where you, as you say, you've got 4% of the Serb population, some of whom use the Dina, the Serb currency, and now they can't. And you've had the Americans criticizing for it, you've had the Europeans criticizing for it, you've had Macron and Schultz were critical about, I mean, you don't seem to mind all that. Well, first of all, I don't mind critique. I'm intellectually a child of critical theory, from, let's say, Jean-Jacques-Rousseau to Frankfurt School. So critique is healthy. I believe that there's no progress without critique. We might disagree,

but European Union, United States of America and UK are our allies, friends and partners. This does not mean that our cooperation is a one-way street. So we have to listen to each other. And in this sense, I believe

that I have to defend Kosovo. I have to represent it better than our allies even. I wouldn't be a prime minister if Kosovo would be a republic. And it's not just partly recognized. It's 117 countries throughout the world. 22 out of 27 in the EU, 26 out of 30, NATO, and Kosovo being a landlock country, won the bid for Mediterranean Games 2030, together with Duras in Albania.

It's still part of the state. What I meant by that is it's not universally recognized. That's all I meant. I wasn't down. And I know that recognition is a massive part of what you're trying to achieve. Prime Minister, before we come back to your political and diplomatic style, tell us a little bit about your experience in prison. What does it feel like being a political prisoner? What did you learn through the experience of being a prisoner? How did it change you as a human being? On one level, there was nothing extraordinary. Albanians, since the end of Second World War, Albanian political prisoners spent altogether almost 700 centuries of,

imprisonment under Yugoslavia and Serbia. So I was just more of the same. On another level, it was very extraordinary experience for me because I was not typical political prisoner. I was rather a war prisoner. On 10th of June 1999, when Serbia was withdrawing its police and military forces in a convoy, they have put red buses with Albanian war prisoners in business. between, so NATO wouldn't bomb them and they used us as a shield. I was transferred to prison in Pajeravats, from prison in Lippian in Kosovo, and Pajervas being the hometown of Milosevic. I spent all together two years and seven months in prison, one year and five months during Milosevic, and one year and two months during Kostunitsa, who came after Milosevic. And he pardoned you eventually.

Yes. So he was three months better than Miloshevis. And tell us about what it's like being in prison. Somebody who's not been in prison, what is it difficult to imagine for someone who's not been inside? Well, I can say how it is in prison when I got in prison by United Nations mission in Kosovo and EU Lex and Kosovo police. But during Serbia, it was like a concentration camp. It was not a prison. I lost 30 kilograms in 1999. And there were like systematic tortures, sometimes several times per day. What sort of torture? Well, beating with clubs, with sticks, many guards at the same time. And these were the people that then would be bringing you food and or would these just be

people brought in for that purpose? No, these were the guards. So I was, I was tortured by uniform. Still nowadays, I do not consider that a Serb tortured me. And what was the purpose of it? Why were they beating you? They were very angry at NATO intervention, and they took it on us. So they weren't trying to get information or anything?

They were just... In the beginning, yes, but I was arrested during NATO bombardment. So then information was not the most important thing anymore. So it was more just like hatred, indignation, and saying, you are going to pay for what NATO is doing to us without thinking what they did so NATO had to bomb them. And you had been convicted for 14 years, so you must have felt this is going to be, I'm going to spend my entire youth in this place being beaten by these people. Psychologically, how did that feel? I was just thinking that I have to make a plan for many

years ahead to learn some foreign language, I was hoping. In the prison, in Portrait of Us, I found a book in Italian. So I was thinking to learn Italian in prison because that was the only book available there. And later on they started to give me books but mainly Russian authors because

they wanted to humiliate me. So I read all of Dostoevsky and Pushkin in prison. In which language? In Serbokwagia. And what insight, for example, does that give you into somebody like Nelson

and Mandela and their capacity, Mandela's particular capacity to come out of prison and forgive his captors and reconcile. What do you learn about someone like that, having been through the experience of being a political prisoner yourself? Well, I was staying in prison only 10% of Adam Democi and Mandela. So I think here volume matters. So I will not be able to say anything in that regard. However, in prison, you have a small space, and a lot of time, that is a place to really read without distractions and no mobile phones, no drinking, and I think that I made a use of it. But at the same time, being a urban middle-class person, I was hanging around in prison mainly with people who were coming from the villages,

and that was indispensable to my ability to organize people when I come out. So when I came out, I managed to create this organization precisely because I knew how to talk and how to relate to people who were coming from the villages. I mean, I completely understand why you don't want to compare yourself to Mandela. But let me try another one, a possible comparison. When you heard that Navalny had died, was your immediate assumption like ours that the regime, the Putin regime, had killed him? And had you ever worried that that was going to happen to you? Yes, I think that just like everyone else, I was also thinking that, of course, Putin himself ordered this murder, not just that his regime killed him.

So I think that Putin knew the day, perhaps even the hour when he will be killed. Because he's that kind of dictator, a dictator that micromanages into operation. It's not any more strategy. beliefs. He's done with it. But in case of me in Serbian prison, I lost consciousness over 40 times during torture and so on. I have no chance to even imagine that I would come out alive with today's body and age. I was young. And I was in my mid-twenties and that was possible. sometimes there were so many

Albanian political prisoners and war prisoners. They were beating all of us, not only me. I was not that specific like Navalny. You had thousands of Albanians there. I was a bit more prominent, but nonetheless there were other people who were very prominent as well.

So perhaps to survive, you get a bit luck as well. So I've seen people dying after five minutes of beatings, and I've seen people, including myself, who has beaten so many times and still come out alive. This is not in our hands. Tell us a little bit about Navalny and your reflections on the decision he made to voluntarily return to Russia, to take the risk of being put in prison, what you think he was trying to achieve personally and politically

through what he did? That is incredible individual strength. And He didn't want to join others who are working from exile. He wanted to give an example, to give courage to people who are suppressed inside Russian Federation. So it is possible to have a call for freedom also inside be that even in prison. And I think that that was his goal, to make a contrast of only exile as possibility for resistance. who wanted to do it inside Russian Federation. And I think that

he succeeded. The name of Alexander Navalny will be the organizing gnomos of resistance in Russian Federation that is like having more than seeds now. I think it will bloom in

near to midterm future. Okay, Rory, Prime Minister, take a break. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers, The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung Vax, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer.

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Hi everybody, it's Dominic Samarach here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alastair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to, to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions.

And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues. And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain, and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we'll be looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about.

We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson and we'll be talking about one of the grimmest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts.

I was speaking to somebody I know in Kosovo recently, and I said that we were going to be talking. And he said that his big worry about Kosovo at the moment is that you have managed to build difficult, troubled relationships with people. who support you aren't, you did need then and you're going to need now. So, for example, you know, I think it's, you talk about brave. It's quite brave, I think, to call the American Secretary of State naive when you're talking about things that he's trying to do. You know, I think Macron had some pretty harsh things to say about you. And I just want to go back to that point, whether, because it's a different way of doing diplomacy, it seems to me. You seem to be deliberately very uncompromising. I'm not saying that as a criticism, but that's your

style, that's your approach. Is that a fair assessment? You don't really worry if these bigger powers are coming at you and saying, you are making this worse, we're going to run out of patience. All my political activism has been marked by idealism on one level and on another level by consistency and insistence as much as I could do according to my abilities and knowledge. the expressions of these sometimes were a bit too much sometimes I overdid

my insistence and consistent give me an example of where you overdid speaking as a fellow overdoer just like words that you use just like actions that you insist in

however you know we cannot change past we can learn lessons and but I have one of my flaws in this political activism has been that I've kept a diary of my thinking more than of my experience. And if I would have kept diary of my experience, perhaps I could do better and more for others and improving myself. Do you mean literally a diary?

Yes. You think you have a thought diary? Yeah, I write down in a notebook. And a friend of mine jokes now that this is good also for cybersecurity. For Prime Minister, this quite uncompromising style is unusual in traditional politicians. Politicians are normally famous for compromise, flexibility. Is this approach that you take, which can be quite confrontational, as Alistair says, with neighbours and supporters, is it just part of your personal character, or is it a political

technique? Do you believe that you can achieve more for your people by being more uncompromising? I've done compromises, but they are forgotten, and they are shadowed by my insistence and consistency. So if you unfold what I've been through, you see a lot of compromises. However, if there are two principles in compromise making that I was trying to stay true to, are number one, I think it was Gandhi, who's had no compromise in the sense. which means that you do compromises but not in the center, which means that you define what is center,

but you don't tell your opponents what is center for you. So in a way, no compromise in the center. Sorry, explain that. I don't know. Just go over that one again. So first principle would have been no compromise in the center, which means yes to compromise, but not in the center. What do you mean? What do you mean by the center? Well, if you have a topic, if you have a subject, if you have an issue, that you negotiate with your counterpart. What's wrong with negotiating in the center? No, no. I'm not saying that not to negotiate in the center. I'm saying not to compromise. So this is number one. Red line? It's like an idea of a red line? Well, it's more like a guiding principle. I wouldn't put red lines. And second is, for me, it's very important during negotiations and dealmaking

in general and not necessarily only with international counterparts, but also in everyday politics and governance to its microphysics of different agencies and ministries is make sure that even if you do a compromise in your, let's say, actuality of current state of affairs,

not to reflect it in your potentiality. In your... Potentiality, in what you can achieve. So for me, I can get, how should I say, smaller at present with the certain idea that I can still grow fast and big in the future. One of the paradoxes that you're struggling with is that Vuchic, the leader of Serbia, your friend, seems to have often very, very outrageous confrontational views about the world.

He's just given an interview on Chinese TV, basically saying, you're welcome to Taiwan. But he also seems to be very, very good at charming. international interlocutors, charming, you know, American envoys, charming other Europeans. What do you learn from looking at him? How does this work? How is he able to say outrageous things in the Serbian press, but still keep such extraordinary international support? And if I can add to that, isn't there a danger that you have managed to make him more popular with the people that you might need to help you? Well, I don't think so. It could be, it's not me to say.

I believe that this kind of situation also says something about Western diplomacy as well. I think that after Russian invasion in Ukraine, Belgrade, not only President Wuchich, they saw that there are two dominant types of diplomats in the West, those who will seek appeasement out of fear, and those who are going to be utopian, thinking that precisely with Vuchits, you're going to bring Serbia into Western camp. Because when you have an autocracy...

So both the appeasers and utopians, they end up acting in the same way, paradoxically. Exactly. So in autocracies, there is a certain magnetism, a certain attraction that one person decides it all. And foreign policy, in autocracy,

is like children's bicycle, can be turned the other way in any minute. So I'm going to go and talk to him. And I'm going to change his mind. So I think this attraction is a trap. And we're sorry, so you think he has laid a trap for, because he is very clever. You agree with that? He's smart.

He's smart. Yes. He's smart. This is how smart. He's smart. And you're saying he has laid a trap into which bigger powers have fallen because in a sense he's giving them the sense that they can push him where they want him to go. but in fact he knows where he wants to go.

But let us not forget, Alistair, that both his fear and love are towards Moscow way more than towards Brussels in Washington, D.C. So in politics, when you have so much power, it depends so much on who do you love most

and who do you fear most. So who do you love most and who do you fear most? Well, I cannot remember who do I fear most, but I love most Republic of Kosovo our Albania nation and especially

Brussels as a double capital and Washington, D.C. and London, where we are now. Give again for international readers your assessment of what Vuchich's objectives are and what this type of Serbian nationalist wants to do

in the region, in Republic of Serbska, in Kosovo, and what will happen if they're not contained. There is a big similarity between implosion of Soviet Union and Yugoslav Federation. Implosion of Soviet Union brought Russian Federation with tentacles

in the form of satellite parastates. Belarus, Crimea, South Ossetia, Pazia, and so on and so forth. Disintegration of former Yugoslavia brought a small quadripus, not big octopus, but small

quadripus. And Republica Serfka is one of the key tentacles of Belgrade. for international listeners, Republic of Serbsky is the Serbian enclave, which is part of Bosnia. Yeah. It's like Republica Serbska is a republic which is not a state within Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is a state and not a republic, you know, but, or perhaps the word Babushka could also... But the key thing for the international listeners is Republic of Serbsky is not part of Serbia,

it's part of Bosnia. And in the peace agreements in the 1990s, it was very important that the Serbian community would remain inside Bosnia. And one of the pressures is, is that Dodich, who is the leader of Republic of Serbska, and indeed the government in Serbia actually want to reunify Republic of Serbska with Serbia, yeah? Yes, that's what they want, joining Serbia, creating greater Serbia, that now they call Serbian world. And what does that mean for Kosovo? It means that they don't hide their ambitions,

and they want to look dangerous, not just be dangerous. And they want to take the whole of Kosovo or northern Kosovo, or what would their objective be? In the past, they wanted whole of Kosovo. There are people who still want that. But in terms of their actions, they would like partitioning Kosovo and taking the northern part of Kosovo. And there are still many daydreaming in Belgrade about that. You know, fantasy is not reality, but influences reality. And tell us about the military confrontations.

Explain a little bit to the audience about what's been happening over the last two years in terms of military confrontations between Serbia and Kosovo on the border. When Albanians were expelled in spring 1999, there was this horseshoe operation. Now horseshoe exists, but it's just outside of Kosovo in the form of 48 forward operating bases. 28 are military, 20 are gender media. And these people are in high alert. It took no other than Mr. Jake Sullivan to come out and publicly warn Vuchis to withdraw these thousands of troops and modern technology that they've got from China and Russia in order to have Belgrade stepping back and withdrawing from the vicinity of our border.

For example, they have Russian airplanes MiG-29, Chinese system FK3, and Chinese drones, CH-92A, all of this at the vicinity of our border. But thanks to Mr. Jake Sullivan, a Belgrade back-up. Just to come about to compromise, so you've had this situation in recent days where the Dinar, Serb currency, which is used by very small section of your population to live, to pay pensions, to pay schools and all sorts of different things. And given that it's a very small part of your overall economy, isn't there somewhere where actually that is a place where you could compromise in the centre and say, okay, look, we're doing this for these reasons, but we understand

that it's going to be very difficult for these people, therefore, in a sense, not make such a big deal of it. You haven't you just made a massive deal of this? And this is what is the latest installment of the Americans and the Europeans saying, are these guys really serious about trying to work this thing through in a way that actually builds lasting peace? And again, to explain to international lessons, just to set the context. So in northern Kosovo, there remains a Serbian population and some of that Serbian population want to continue to use Serbian currency, continue to use Serbian number plates. And this has become a real source. of tension because the Prime Minister has been insisting they're part of Kosovo and therefore

they should be using Kosovo and other plates, Kosovo. First of all, this is a decision of Central Bank of Kosovo as a new regulation adopted on 27th of December last year. I had no idea that this regulation will be taken. However, I fully support it. Because? Because it is directed against illicit activities, financing terrorism, and formalizing what is written in our Constitution, namely that the only currency as means of payment is euro. We did

not ban dinar as such. You can own dinars and pounds and Swiss francs and dollars, but you cannot use them as means of payment according to our constitution. And 33,000 elderly Serbs who have been retired in recent years are taking pensions also from the Kosovo system in bank accounts, in commercial banks of Kosovo, 10 of them altogether, eight foreign banks to Kosovo. So they can, they have bank accounts. So what we're asking from Serbia, because our central bank wrote a letter to People's Bank of Serbia, to find a smooth way of sending those dinners to new bank accounts and to exchange them for euros. As we speak today, euro is used in all the shops in four northern municipalities without any problems. Precisely because the preparation was going on smoothly on the ground,

Vouchich interfered because he saw the success. So it's not that failure on the ground caused his reaction on the country. Okay, but listening to you now, you're going to, you're going from here, you're going to go to Belfast and you're going to meet the first minister and the deputy first minister and see how things have sort of panned out there. I kind of feel hearing you that were we having a conversation now with Vuchich? or somebody from the Serb regime, that they'd be giving a totally different interpretation of events. And that's what it feels a little bit to me like

in the days when, if you went to Belfast, you had one hard line on this side and one hard line on this side, and you couldn't ever see where they would meet. And I just wonder where you see things meeting in the future so that we don't end up in a situation where we do go back to. This visit to Belfast has been arranged four months ago, And I'm looking very much to go to Belfast. I've never been there.

And I want to see myself especially situation in two accounts. First is a joint community police. And second is shared education. In Kosovo, we don't have ethnic divisions. We have language barrier. I believe in multilingualisticism. I think that human beings are not meant to speak only one language or to live only in one place throughout their lives. So basically we're going to move back and forth like our diaspora does, which is one third of our population.

And we're going to learn several languages. So I just want to see myself reading a few books, listening. In a way, I want to see myself how the situation is on the ground. But this has nothing to do with the dinar. And Central Bank of Kosovo already outlined a 10 steps plan for smooth transition within the three months period. So this is more or less settled. Okay, but so much of this is about symbols, and in Ireland it's been so much about symbols historically.

So, you know, we've talked on the podcast before about the issue of the Serb car number plates. Is that, again, not something that you can say, look, we can sort this out without making it a big deal? And I guess that's answer to this question is, why not compromise on this? Why not bring them on side through compromise? If the source of tension would have been on the ground from below,

I wouldn't have been this optimistic. All of the tension that we have in Kosovo is because of the autocrat in Belgrade. And he is nervous and in panic precisely because Serbs in Kosovo, they want to integrate. Because they see how they benefit from integration. And they are not 40% of population, not 14% of population, 4% of population. And it was 10? And it was 10 in the 90s. Yes, many left, but vast majority of them together with Serbian police and army in summer 1999.

I am Prime Minister of Serbs as well. They have 10 reserve seats in our parliament out of 120. Serbian language is official language all over Kosovo at every level of administration. Deputy Ombudsperson of Kosovo is a Serb. I appoint Serbs in board of directors in publicly owned enterprises. So we cooperate well. But precisely this success is increasing tensions caused by Belgrade, who is very worried that we're having success in integrating Serbs. You've talked in the past about Kosovo and Albania coming together. Can you

tell us a little bit about that? Is that something you still believe? Why did you believe it? What is that vision? Kosovo and Albania are two different states, but not two different nations. For example, sometimes you have much more differences among Albanians within Albania or within Kosovo than between Kosovo and Albania. There has been this London conference in 1913. which has divided Albanians. And back then, foreign secretary, Sir Edward Gray, said, we did a great injustice to Albania in order to preserve European peace. And one year after, we get the First World War, so much of European peace.

So for historical reasons, there is a certain trauma in us being divided. However, now, especially after Russian invasion in Ukraine, we see that nation states are not self-sustainable. They are not self-sufficient. Are they self-determined? Yes, but we need self-determination towards strengthening both European Union and NATO. So in this double capital called Brussels, I see the solution. So you no longer believe of unification with Albania? I don't want to exclude that, but I won as Prime Minister on a ticket of jobs and justice.

And to be honest, that's what I do best. And can I ask if there is an argument for Kosovo unifying with Albania, surely there is a similar argument which Dodich would make for Republica Serbska unifying with Serbia? I think that the analogy wouldn't stand because Republica Serbska is a creation of genocide of Srebrenica. So the Bosnaks, the Muslims, did not go back to the places where they have been expelled. So, Republica Serbska came out of Dayton, whereas Kosovo was constitutive part of former Federation of Yugoslavia. We declared independence in coordination with Western partners, and for the first four years, it was supervised independence.

In 2010, July 2010, International Court of Justice ruled that declaration of independence of Kosovo did not violate international law. But I mean, I think I suppose one of the really interesting things is you're creating a new nation, you're creating a new state based on particular types of identity at a very difficult time in the world. Because almost everything you say has echoes with other countries. You know, the expulsion, for example, of Palestinians in the 1940s from what is now the heart of Israel. Suddenly reminds me of your statements about the expulsion of Bosnia Muslims who then didn't return to Republic of Sepska. notions of reunifying Kosovo and Albania do echo, of course, with reunifying Republic Serbska and Serbia, reunifying Crimea and Russia.

So what does it mean to be a nationalist in the modern world? And how can one tell the difference between good nationalism, bad nationalism? Right-wing nationalism, left-wing nationalism. Well, I think one of the measurements would be whether your nationalistic, attitude is for liberation towards equality with other nations, or you want territorial expansion, hegemony and domination over others. So you have to justify your nationalism in terms of liberation because we can say that Charles de Gaulle, Franz Fanon and Marie Le Pen, they are both nationalists, but if you put them in the same basket, you couldn't make a bigger mistake. So I think that

we have to see it in terms of national liberation struggle and for the sake of equality in order to listen to the legitimization narrative of that nationalism. Do you not worry that if you don't manage to improve relations with Belgrade, that the whole vision that several of the leaders in that region have to try to work towards membership of the European Union, that that's just going to go for a generation? Well, I believe all of the Balkans should join European Union, faster, sooner, definitely better. But it's been But it can't happen at the moment, in part because of the difficulties in the relationships. Yes, but one of the reasons why it is not going to happen soon is because the support for EU in Serbia fell to 35%.

20 years ago, when Zoran Jinjic was alive as Prime Minister of Serbia, student of Jirgen Habermas, Western-oriented, then support for EU was 75%. Now it fell to 35%. EU cannot impose inclusion of your country. So both Russian Federation and European Union have history of enlargement. But European Union enlarges peacefully and Russian Federation violently. So you cannot join into EU if you don't want to join into EU. So there are needed democratic changes in Serbia.

That's why I think that groundbreaking moment is Russian aggression in Ukraine because the key values now of also identity building are the values, the foundational values of Council of Europe, namely democracy, rule of law and human rights. Which brings me, I think, to you joining the Council of Europe and the power that that could have diplomatically for shaping you. And I think a second related question, which is, again, explaining to listeners how Kosovo and Serbia and other countries joining the European Union will solve so many of the political and economic problems and why this needs to be a priority for Europe. You join European Union in order to also contribute, not benefit. So I think that we have to prepare to contribute. This is very important.

European Union should be homegrown, yet not self-made. We need help. But it should be built within each country. And to that end, I think that the values of European Union are very important. market economy, qualitative education, human rights, minority rights, fight against corruption, good neighborly relations, and so on and so forth. So I think that, yes, values and interests are not the same thing, but they cannot be decoupled. So it is very important to have these values being built within our system and society,

and in particular, efficient professional administration. And we had Eddie Rama on the podcast a few months ago, and you're both leaders of small countries who've got a kind of disproportionate profile in a way for the countries that you lead. But do you see yourselves as partners, or do you see yourselves as rivals for Albanian leadership in the world? And how does that relationship work? All of these two plus brothers. So partners and rivals and brothers, three in one. But even there you've had, because the Open Balkan Initiative is sort of, that's not progressed in the way that they wanted it to.

So at every stage, you have this, the word that people keep coming back to is kind of, you know, knows his own mind, but very uncompromising. And it's never quite clear where it's going to end. Well, we're both social Democrats. We agree on so many issues most of the time. But then when we disagree, that makes news. We do not agree regarding open Balkans. In my view, we need European Balkans. European Balkans is open enough, whereas open Balkans is not European enough. Because it's Serb dominated. And it's like open Balkans, open to whom? To do what? You know, it's like open to Russian Federation? Because Serbia has great relations with both Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. So if you enter with Serbia, with the idea of open Balkans, Serbia being open to Russia and China, that's not okay. My final question, we are in a world now in which the government of Armenia has moved against Azerbaijan, where Russia has moved against Ukraine, where the rhetoric coming from Belgrade implies that there is a increased possibility of another conflict in the Balkans. What would this mean if this happened, God forbid, but if this were to happen, what do you think this would mean for Europe and the international order?

When U.S. intervened in Iraq, I remember very well some of the Serbian media writing that if U.S. goes after Iran, that will be our historical window of opportunity to go back to Kosovo. Now, recently, President of Serbia has been quoting President Aliyev in Azerbaijan that they have been waiting for 27 years to do what they've done. So my question is, should we count 27 years from 1999, which makes 2026 a dangerous year for us? Or should we count from now? So in 2050, new attack of Serbia, we could be quite relaxed. I think this idea of waiting historical window of opportunity is a very problematic thing for security architecture of the Balkans. And here, I think we can be saved by building our own capabilities and capacities, but also by joining NATO. Joining NATO and EU is also a security thing now, not just a matter of citizens' well-being.

My final question relates to the American presidential elections. So I mentioned that you've had words with Anthony Blinken, but you really had words with the whole Trump administration. So how all the things that we've been talking about, what is the implication for them of either a Biden second term or a Trump second term by winning the election in November? Prior to last elections in US, I publicly supported President Joe Biden. I think that on one level, whoever wins in US, Kosovo will continue to be independent sovereign democratic republic in the Iceland. of Washington, D.C. However, things are changing fast and people are worried. In the case of next elections is difficult to predict now. However, I believe that Kosovo and U.S. will continue to have excellent relations. We have them as indispensable lie in terms of defending and securing our

country. And maybe we spent a bit too much time in thinking. who's going to win in US, bearing in mind a quote by famous American filmmaker David Lynch on President Trump. He said something to paraphrase him as follows. You cannot combat him in an intelligent way. So basically, you may spend a lot of time in thinking which will not pay back. If I read that right, I mean, you must have a, you've just been talking about the vision of Kosovo being part of NATO, but one of the big implications of Trump beating Biden again is the future of NATO. We have already fulfilled 2% criteria. I have doubled support for military in Kosovo in terms of military equipment and also trainings. And we have, for example, cadets in Sandhurst Military Academy here. And in this respect, the critique of former President Trump was not in relation to Kosovo, but to some other European countries. Okay. But I note that you're not this time saying he would support Joe Biden.

Well, you know, it goes without a saying in terms that I'm a social democrat. I work very much with a Democratic Party of U.S. with NDI in Kosovo. but then again, not only with US, but also within EU, I have to meet so many presidents and prime ministers who are from right-wing parties, centre-right and right-wing parties. Well, thanks for coming to watch us. Have a good time in Northern Ireland and in Dublin,

and we'll keep in touch. Thank you very much. Great, great privilege to see you again, and thank you for your time. Thank you very much for having me and for this great opportunity. I thought that was fascinating. I think it's really difficult getting across the tension there, which is that this is a man with a reputation as being very uncompromising

and difficult. But of course, in person, he's very charming, very thoughtful, good with words, very highly intellectual. And of course, I feel deep sympathy for him. And one of the things we didn't talk about is that he's got a really impressive reputation on anti-corruption. And Kosovo's not an easy place on that. And even his greatest enemies say that he's had a really clean record in government, which is very, very unusual. Well, especially one of the first things he did when became prime minister was to cut the pay of all of them. No, I think he's, look, I know a lot of people in Kosovo, and there's obviously he's got, you know, he won the election big time. He's got a lot of supporters, but I probably

know more of his non-supporters, and they said, he's only what you just said, he's incredibly charming. He's very clear about who and what he is and what he believes. But I did have that very strong feeling maybe it's because he just told us before we started recording he was going to belfast i just had that very strong feeling that it was like it was like talking to a unionist before talking to a nationalist and then we talked to the nationalist and if you imagine if we'd have had him and then butchich we're getting completely different stories of the versions of the same story yes but it's interesting that thing about the compromising star he really because you know i i wasn't down playing it in recent weeks he's had france germany brussels

senior people in Washington, including Blinken, coming out and saying, look, you know, our patience isn't going to be here forever. If you want us to be a reliable friend, you've got to be a reliable friend back. And yet there was no give there, was there? No. And I think he must feel at some fundamental level that the compromises that are being forced on him. Because, of course, you can imagine what international diplomats are saying is we don't want a war between Kosovo and service. So for goodness sake. Don't pick a bloody number place. Don't pick a license plates or DNAR. Let's have some compromise here. But his view is.

is that he is in the right. There is a constitution. There are agreements. There's a law. And he's bugged if he's going to make these kinds of compromises, which he thinks are just run by a autocratic nationalist regime in Serbia, just trying to cause trouble. And it's very difficult to know as a diplomat when compromises are necessary and when they're unnecessary.

And also, if you remember that on the Q&A recently, we had that question about whether there shouldn't be more straightforward diplomacy where people sort of say what they think. Now, he wasn't repeating some of the things that he said about these other powers, but nor was he resiling, and he was clear that he was perfectly happy to have good relations, but he wasn't going to move on things that he wouldn't move on. I didn't really understand what he was saying about not compromising in the centre. I didn't really get that. I think what he means is that he has central beliefs which won't be compromised on. There's a core to him which won't be touched.

I see. I thought he meant he was saying that, you know, you might think the best way to negotiate is start here and start and then try and bring people together in the middle, but he's not. No, I think he has an indestructible core. He doesn't want to touch. I also wonder whether, I mean, he's a very, as you say,

very thoughtful intellectual politician, but there must be something that actually works for a politician about being uncompromising. I mean, we're in an age where people are pretty fed up with politicians. Also, you touched on the nationalism thing, that, you know, he is a nationalist, and he stokes the nationalism within Kosovo and the feelings of this are surrounded by enemies.

And they'll quite like the fact he's not compromising. He'll get a lot of votes from people saying. I suspect that's what helped. You're standing up to them. Because he's great. He's kind of, he started, you know, four, five elections ago. And, you know, lose, lose. Then he sort of won for a bit.

Then he was out again. Then he's back in. But it's absolutely fascinating. Because the irony is that the most famous previous leader of Kosovo Hashentachi was a very, very colorful character, not considered the great clean anti-corruption campaigner of all time. And yet was much more loved by the international community because he was seen It's more jolly, more engaging. I mean, I should say, I think it is incredible that he's being kept in the Hague without

any knowledge as to when this whole thing is going to get resolved. I mean, one of these people who I know, his brains I picked ahead of it said, imagine you're dealing with somebody that's kind of a bit Jeremy Corbyn and a bit Jean-Lick Melanchon. I don't exactly know what he meant by that. He didn't mean the hard left thing. I think he is a sort of, he's quite left women, he's a social Democrat. But I think he meant absolutely, I've got my views. I don't move off them.

It's a child of two engineers, very kind of black and white. It's black and white view as well. Anyway, it was great, and thank you for that. Great.