Kosovo president resigns

According to AL JAZEERA, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci has resigned from office to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity at a special court in The Hague.

After the Kosovo Specialist Chamber (KSC) confirmed an indictment on Thursday against Thaci, the president said at a news conference he is quitting “to protect the integrity of the presidency of Kosovo”.

He has denied any wrongdoing.

Thaci, who served as a political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during Kosovo’s fight for independence in 1998-99, departed on Thursday afternoon for his trial in the Netherlands.

Joining him on the military plane were Kadri Veseli, leader of Thaci’s Democratic Party, and Kosovo member of parliament Rexhep Selimi – fellow former leaders of the KLA who have also been indicted – Serbian state news agency Tanjug reported.

Jakup Krasniqi, a veteran politician and former spokesman for the KLA was arrested in Kosovo’s capital Pristina on Wednesday and also transferred to The Hague, the Kosovo war crimes tribunal said in a statement.

Presidential duties have now been handed over to Parliament Speaker VjosaOsmani.

Serbia’s oppression against the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo gave rise to the rebel KLA, founded in the early 1990s. Violence spiralled in 1998-99 as the KLA fought for independence against Belgrade’s forces led by President Slobodan Milosevic.

The war ended in 1999 when NATO bombed Belgrade to stop the killings and expulsions of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo by Serb forces. The war killed more than 10,000 people.

Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008, which Belgrade refuses to recognise.

According to the indictment originally issued by the KSC in June, Thaci and nine others committed “nearly 100 murders” and other atrocities against “hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities”, including political opponents.