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"We're entering the time of dirty politics," said Baton Haxhiu, the editor in chief of Koha Ditore. "I have reliable information that Bukoshi paid for that story" that Thaci killed KLA rivals.

The interim U.N. special representative to Kosovo, Brazilian diplomat Sergio Vieira de Mello (who's due to be replaced shortly by a permanent U.N. representative), has spent the past several days troubleshooting the political minefield of Kosovar Albanian politics. His deputy said Thursday that they are in final negotiations on the composition of a "transitional council" that is to serve as Kosovo's provisional government until elections are held.

But Kosovo's squabbling politicians cannot even agree on the formula by which that council would be formed.

"We as the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) do not accept de Mello's proposed formula," said Edita Tahiri, the 43-year-old English-speaking engineer who has served as foreign advisor to Kosovo's longtime pacifist president, Ibrahim Rugova, in an interview Thursday. "The situation is very complicated. We support Thaci as prime minister, but not Thaci's government," said Tahiri.

Rugova, a Tahiri ally, has not returned from exile in Rome with his family, leading to suspicions that his future in Kosovo politics is in jeopardy. Rugova, who for 10 years was the clear leader of the Kosovo Albanians, lost respect among many when he was shown on Serbian television during the NATO airstrikes meeting with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and calling for the airstrikes to end. Most Kosovar Albanians supported the NATO airstrikes, even though they led to revenge attacks by Serbian forces that forced almost a million Kosovo Albanians to flee.

Tahiri complains that Kosovo Albania's leading newspaper, Koha Ditore, and its publisher, Veton Surroi, refuse to carry her party's message any longer to the Kosovo Albanian people: "Veton Surroi pretends to be independent. But for weeks he has carried out an embargo on information from our party. We came to Kosovo two weeks ago and held a press conference in front of our destroyed offices and Koha Ditore did not publish anything about the press conference," she said.

Like Bukoshi, Tahiri contends that Thaci is very close with the socialist government of Albania, and she says that Albanian television, which Kosovo Albanians can receive by satellite, is edited by people sympathetic to the Kosovo Liberation Army, and not Rugova's LDK party.

It is not clear what the squabbling means for the future of Kosovo, which looks set to be so heavily administered by the international community over the next few years that Kosovo Albanian leaders may not have all that much influence. However, getting positions of legitimacy now would guarantee a Kosovo Albanian politician access and decision-making power over the billions of dollars slated to be contributed to Kosovo's reconstruction.

For now, the lack of consensus that plagues Kosovo Albanian politics even after the removal of their chief enemy -- the Serbian forces -- just means more disfunctionality for the long-suffering Kosovo Albanian population. Little works in the province that KFOR hasn't fixed: The phone lines are little better than Dixie cups, running water comes and goes, the trash has not been picked up in months or years.

"Pragmatic things, not high politics, are the real challenge now," Bukoshi, one of the two prime ministers, said Sunday. "I would like to see a democratic, tolerant Kosovo society respectful of all the rules of civilization. It would be a pity if the international investment in Kosovo was wasted because they supported guys who will criminalize Kosovo," Bukoshi said, referring to the Thaci crowd.

Looking out the second-floor window of his office to a dreary street in Pristina, Bukoshi says Kosovo's politicians should come together to at least begin picking up the garbage.
salon.com | July 2, 1999

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