11 December 2007 Pristina _ Around 10,000 people, demonstrated in Pristina on Monday, demanding that Kosovo’s assembly should declare independence within a month.
The demonstration was held to mark the expiry of the negotiating period on Kosovo's long-term status. The negotiations failed to produce an agreed solution.
“We want our Parliament to declare independence without any further delay, and we call on the international community to recognise independence as the best solution for Kosovo,” said one of the principal organizers at the start of the demonstration.
Petrit Nimani, the leader of the Albanian Students' Group, told the gathering that “the best negotiated compromise that Kosovo offered was the Ahtisaari package, and now it is time unhesitatingly to declare independence.”
Nimani said January 10 should be the deadline by which the Kosovar authorities declare independence.
“We are angry at both parties – the international community, which is playing with our patience, and our own government, which is not moving fast with the only possible step – a declaration [of independence]," another of the young organisers, who declined to give his name, told Balkan Insight.
Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999, and following two years of talks between Belgrade and Pristina aimed at reaching agreement on its political status, a declaration of independence is now considered likely, in coordination with Western powers.
When former UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari announced a plan for internationally-supervised independence, Russia threatened to veto any such move in the Security Council, and additional talks were organised under the aegis of an international Troika, consisting of the European Union, Russia and the United States.
The deadline of the additional negotiating process runs out today, 10 December.
A majority of Kosovo Albanians now seem impatient to see a prompt declaration of independence. (Birn, BalkanWeb, Koha Shqiptare)
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