Democratic Party of Kosovo

Vjosa Osmani became Kosovo's fifth head of state in 13 years since the country declared its independence from Serbia on Sunday night when MPs in the Kosovo Assembly voted to appoint her as president.

Osmani, a 38-year-old lawyer, also became the second woman to hold the post, after Atifete Jahjaga, who was president from 2011 to 2016.

Kosovo's election winner, Albin Kurti of the Vetevendosje (Self-Determination) Movement, has for the past two days been in the parliament building holding meetings with leaders of all political parties that won seats in the February 14 general elections, trying to form a government quickly before turning to the issue of the country's next president.

Gani Koci, a former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla turned politician, announced on Facebook on Thursday that he has been summoned as a witness by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office in The Hague, which is probing wartime and post-war crimes in Koosvo.

Political leaders in Kosovo have accepted the landslide victory of the Vetevendosje Movement in Sunday's snap parliamentary elections, with some saying they took responsibility for their own parties' poor showing.

The opposition Vetevendosje party was on course for a landslide victory in snap parliamentary elections in Kosovo on Sunday, on a day that its leader and prime ministerial candidate, Albin Kurti, described as a "bright day" when he cast his ballot at a Pristina polling centre in the morning.

For two decades, voters in the town of Skenderaj/Srbica in Kosovo's Drenica Valley have been pledging their support to the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK and its former leader Hashim Thaci, the wartime political chief of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA who went on to dominate politics in the country in the years after the conflict.

Shehu is one of scores of Albanian army officers who joined the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA in its war against the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police and paramilitaries in 1999.

The Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans' Organisation branch in the town of Has said on Tuesday evening that former guerrilla Nezir Cocaj, who is running for re-election as an MP next month, has been called for questioning by the Specialist Prosecutor's Office in The Hague.

The Kosovo Specialist Chambers published on Monday a redacted decision by a pre-trial judge confirming an indictment against former President Hashim Thaci and three former fellow guerrilla commanders accusing them of crimes against humanity and war crimes during and after the 1998-99 Kosovo war.

Extraordinary local elections held in the municipalities of Podujeve/ Podujeva and North Mitrovica are seen as sending two signals; in one, they confirmed the growing popularity of Kosovo's biggest opposition party, Vetevendosje - and, in the other, Belgrade's continued influence in the Serb-majority north.