Fatmir Limaj

Former Kosovo President Hashim Thaci addressed the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague on Tuesday as defence lawyers began their opening statements in his trial, saying he anticipates that he will be cleared.

"I expect to be acquitted," Thaci told the court.

The end of 2017 was also the end of Malcolm Simmons' career as an international judge in the Balkans.

Kosovo's largest parliamentarian party, the Vetevendosje Movement, LVV, staged a march in Pristina's main Skanderbeg Square on Friday to mark the 15th anniversary of its organisation - and the 21st anniversary of Kosovo's liberation from Serbian rule in 1999.

However, after determining the final results of the Kosovo elections, if the coalition of Fatmir Limaj and Behgjet Pacolli NISMA-ANK enter parliament in Pristina after all, the first-ranked Albin Kurti's Vetvendosje and Isa Mustafa's Democratic League of Kosovo would no longer have the votes of 61 MPs, required for a government vote.

The shock resignation of Ramush Haradinaj drew sympathetic comments from senior Kosovo officials and politicians on Friday after the prime minister was summoned for questioning by the Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor's Office in The Hague, which is investigating crimes committed during and just after the Kosovo war, from 1998 to 2000.

Blerim Kuci. Photo: BIRN.

"Today I received the invitation letter and the order to appear before the high prosecutor of the Specialist Prosecutor's Office in The Hague, on March 12, 2019," Kuci wrote in a statement sent to local media on Thursday.

He added that he will "fulfil the obligation and will respond to this order".

He told RTK last night that everyone should be clear that the status of Kosovo will not be negotiated.

"We are going to the dialogue for recognition. Of course, there are other topics that have remained open. The Serb side, of course, can start a topic," said Limaj.

The newspaper said on Monday that Limaj was a member of a group ten defendant acquitted of charges of crimes against civilians and members of the Serbian (Yugoslav) Army and (Serbian) police in the village of Klecka near Suva Reka in 1998.

Dozens of people were killed and massacred there, their bodies thrown into a lime pit to cover up the crime.

The parliamentary group of the biggest Kosovo opposition party, the Democratic League of Kosovo, LDK on Tuesday demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj and his deputy, Fatmir Limaj, after a statement from European Commissioner Johannes Hahn that visa liberalisation with the EU is more likely to come by 2020 than the hoped-for end of 2018.

An appeals court upheld the verdict acquitting former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Fatmir Limaj, who is now deputy prime minister, clearing him of responsibility for the murders of two ethnic Albanian civilians in 1998.