HAGUE

The presidency of the Kosovo Assembly has sent a draft law to the government, pushing forward a controversial attempt to prevent a new Hague-based Kosovo war crimes court from operating.

A second bid to start the process of revoking the law that allows a new Hague-based war crimes court for Kosovo to operate failed on Wednesday.

Chairman of parliament and ruling party leader Kadri Veseli described the new Hague-based Specialist Chambers which will try former Kosovo guerrillas as unjust, but said MPs’ attempts to stop it would not succeed.

The US, Britain, France, Germany and Italy condemned ongoing attempts by MPs in Pristina to revoke the law that allows the new Hague-based Specialist Chambers to try former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters.

After a failed attempt to revoke the law that allows the new Hague-based Specialist Chambers to try former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, MPs who backed the initiative vowed not to give up.

MP Daut Haradinaj, a former Kosovo Liberation Army fighter and brother of the prime minister, said that arrests by the new Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers would cause a major backlash.

MPs failed on Friday night to push forward an attempt to revoke a law allowing a new Hague-based court to try former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters for war crimes after strong pressure from the US and the EU.

As MPs staged a dramatic intervention to change the law on the new Hague-based court that will try Kosovo Liberation Army members, the US ambassador to Pristina warned it could have “profoundly negative implications”.

BELGRADE - Veljko Odalovic, secretary-general of the Serbian Foreign Ministry and head of the government commission on missing persons, hopes a new Hague-based special court set up to try war crimes committed by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army will provide at least some answers to questions about war crimes in Kosovo-Metohija and that the perpetrators will be punished.

The European Union approved 19 judges who will serve at the new Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers, set up to try former Kosovo Liberation Army members for 1990s wartime crimes.