itself independent some 15 years ago but which is still not recognised by and is locked in a potentially dangerous confrontation with neighbouring serbia. now, kosovo�*s key allies in washington and brussels are telling my guest today, kosovo�*s prime minister, albin kurti, to cool it — and quickly. will he listen? and if he doesn't, could kosovo see a new round of balkan bloodshed? prime minister albin kurti, welcome to hardtalk. welcome to pristina and thank you for having me.

well, it's a great pleasure to be in your office. prime minister, how close has kosovo come to seeing a renewal of conflict in the last few months? it has been very heavy because the two extremist terrorist organisations, which are being financed by serbia, and from where they also receive their orders, civil protection and the northern brigade have been very active and first intimidating serbs and serbian candidate, who would like to vote and run in elections, and second, in attacking our police, journalists but, first and foremost, nato soldiers on 29 may. you've chosen, in that answer, to pile all of the blame on your serbian minority population. that is not the way

the international community sees things right now. i never blame serbian minority population. they are 4% of population in kosovo, less than half of them live north of the river ibar, but i was blaming two specific organisations, and also belgrade who is controlling them, for the violent riots, for the violent unrest that we had in recent months. the eu envoy responsible for trying to normalise the situation here in kosovo, he had a discussion with you just a couple of days ago. he described that discussion is long, frank and open and he stressed to you — to you — the urgent need for de—escalation. are you prepared to take actions to de—escalate the tension? of course, and i have offered to have early elections in the four

northern municipalities as soon as possible, and to that end, we have to have rule of law in place, so we have a fair and open campaign, prior to free and democratic elections. the united states and your european allies, certainly the united kingdom, asked you not to do that. you didn't seek their advice. you just did it. why? on 23rd ofjune, minister for internal affairs, xhelal svecla, together with our director of police, gazmend xoxha, they made a press conference where they have exposed all the ammunition and armaments, including rocket launchers, they have confiscated, in a car with belgrade car plates belonging to this northern brigade, but which actually was also belonging to the serbia railways, a publicly owned enterprise in serbia. at that press conference, the minister of internal affairs

announced that he's going to ask from the government to declare this organisation as a terrorist organisation. if i would not have done so, i would violate my law, and i would have to neglect the data from our security sector and intelligence agency. i asked you specifically about your cooperation and co—ordination with united states and european allies. the us state department criticised your move to label these groups as terror organisations. it said "the decision should have been co—ordinated with the closest international partners of kosovo, including those with prime responsibility to ensure stability in kosovo." "we," said the us state department, "again call on kosovo to refrain from unilateral moves." why are you ignoring your friends in the united states? we regularly communicate and co—ordinate with both the eu and us but then i have to respect and to apply constitutionality

and legal order and lawfulness of public of kosovo. of republic of kosovo. i am prime minister of kosovo because kosovo is a republic. five days before making this decision with which we declare these two organisations terrorist organisations, they were notified about what we are going to do. so we do co—ordinate, that does not mean we agree all of the time on all issues. the serbs say you are operating paramilitary police forces in those ethnic serb towns, at least four of them in the north of your country. they say they have clear evidence and i'm quoting now from the serbian press, "beating and torturing of ethnic serbians in their home communities." they name an individual man who has been pictured with his head in a bag, barechested, he has been beaten, these are pictures the serbs say were circulated within the kosovo police force, bragging

about the abuse of ethnic serbs. what are you doing about that? out of a dozen of these violent extremists, which have been arrested, there has been one case of misconduct of a policeman, who has been immediately suspended but otherwise on all other allegations, my minister ofjustice and minister of internal affairs have sent letters to mr borrell... the eu foreign minister. ..that whatever we did was fully in compliance with procedures and law of kosovo and he has been convinced of this. see, you say the situation right now in the north of your country is, to use your word at the beginning of this interview, "very heavy". the serb side, of course lead by president aleksandar vukic says and i'm quoting him, "we are at a crossroads, whether we will have peace or not,

and there is only one man in the balkans who wants to incite conflict — that is albin kurti." well, he attacks me every day, sometimes several times a day, but kosovo is a democratic country, pro—western orientated. according to transparency international, to freedom house, world justice project, videm, electoral democracy, according to reporters without borders, kosovo is a democratic country, whereas serbia is a hybrid regime or authoritarian. we are pro—eu, pro—nato and pro—us. serbia is very much aligned with the kremlin. i am telling you... he is saying this, but that's simply false allegations against me. my point throughout this interview so far has been the eu, the us and your closest friends are telling you that you need to take actions

to de—escalate the situation. and the one thing more than any other that they want you to do, is to deliver on the promise that kosovo made in an agreement with serbia brokered by the eu, some ten years ago in 2013, a promise to allow the ethnic serbian population in your country to create this association of serbian municipalities, which could represent their interests, in this country. your country made the promise ten years ago, you refused to deliver on it. why? belgrade wanted this association out of their policy for territorial ethno—nationalism which resulted in the republic of

bosnia—herzegovina. it is true my predecessor ten years ago signed such an agreement. prime minister taci made a solemn promise deliver it? yes, and then this agreement was elaborated further by another prime minister, my predecessor as well, in 2015 — but this agreement, failed the test of constitutional court. constitutional court decision said in 23 articles of our constitution, basically have been violated, by this association, of municipalities. they are a tiny minority, why are you so frightened of them? you compare it to the situation in bosnia with republika srpska but there the serbs represent 37% of the population of bosnia, here they represent 4 or 5%, why are you so scared? we are not scared. we're just vigilant because belgrade is using them to not recognise kosovo and to seek division, partition of kosovo. if it would not have been for belgrade, of course 4% of population would never represent any kind of risk.

again it is not serbian community which is endangering our republic, are these parallel legal structures getting millions and millions are these parallel illegal structures getting millions and millions of euros annually from belgrade in order to sabotage our independence. are you, right now, prepared to talk to the president vucic of serbia about all of this or not? of course, i was in brussels on 22nd ofjune, but it was president vucic who did not want to have a meeting. i think my constructiveness and my creativity has been shown throughout with different proposals. i proposed the model which is inspired by serbs in croatian, croation model. serbia and croatia have a normalisation agreement with a mechanism for protection of minority rights. and serbians are happy with that, i said let's do it also in kosovo. but they do not want to hear. croatia in 2013, they signed

a document making a explicit promise you are not prepared to keep. does it worry you, that your best friends, your most important friends in the international community starting with the european union, think you have got this wrong? and indeed, they are so sure that you have got it wrong, and that you need to change your mind, they have imposed sanctions on kosovo, right now? these sanctions have nothing to do with the 2013 agreement because that agreement is part of 39 agreements signed by my predecessors and which should be implemented if valid and binding according to article ten of basic treaty which i made with the president vucic in brussels and then implementation. what you are referring to an agreement ten years ago, that is one out of 39 agreements, which is part of article 10 of the newest agreement which i made with president vucic.

you cannot put the cart before the horse now by picking and choosing this single agreement. so why do you...? prime minister, you say it's not all about the agreement signed in 2013. you tell me, then — why are the member states of the eu, your friends, why are they imposing very serious sanctions on you right now? it has to do with the situation in the north where, simply, on one hand, they don't want to put proper names to specific events and things. for example, three of our policeman have been abducted a month ago, in territory of kosovo by serbian special military and police unit. (crosstalk). that is in dispute. the serbs say they picked them up inside serbian territory. that is not true. i have offered tons of evidence all my international partners and friends know it has

happened in leposavic. in my view, what they are trying to do is by being soft with serbia, to try to move it out from the influence of kremlin. and i think this policy... of russia? of course. you think this is all about russia? i think it has a lot to do with belgrade pushing in the direction of brussels and washington when actually belgrade are so much linked with kremlin, historically, culturally but also in terms of military and energy. so, to get this straight, you are accusing the eu of betraying their strong relationship with you because they're trying to persuade president vucic and the serbs to move away from putin and russia? is that it? i have no other explanaation why they are tolerating so much a minister of propaganda from the time of milosevic who doesn't put sanctions

to russian federation, almost a year and a half since the invasion of ukraine started, i have no other explanation. we as human beings are in search of meaning, i do not know how to explain to myself and to others how soft they are with belgrade. maybe you need to look at the diplomatic big picture. i have read reports and you would have as well significant amounts that significant amounts of serbian ammunition for example, manufactured in serbia are going through third parties into ukraine, being used by ukrainian forces. that matters to the united states and europe and perhaps you have to accept that right now the diplomatic weather is changing, and you are going to have to adapt to that as well. if an autocrat is friends with vladimir putin, for changing that, a democratic country like kosovo should not pay. the autocrat should pay towards... do you feel you and your interests are being sacrificed because the west is so concerned

about the war in ukraine? i think they are so concerned about the possibility of spillover in the balkans, and that is real, because of the link of belgrade with moscow. but also they know that the serbian ruler in belgrade is not a democrat and he has a lot of power, and they never faced the past — the crimes they committed in the past — they consider their neighbours temporary states. for example, boznia and herzegovina, by belgrade, it is dejure recognised, but de facto not. there's a lot of influence of belgrade in montenegro. so this kind of regional hegemonic power in direct link with moscow is causing a lot of fear in the west, and for which i believe republic of kosovo should not pay. but, yes, but, but, but... just let me, please, let me explain this. towards a democrat, i am a social democrat. towards an autocrat,

i must be a sovereignist, too. what we're doing in the north is rule of law, as sovereignty, and sovereignty as rule of law. you are paying a price — that's the fact, because eu sanctions imposed in the last few weeks, according to your own alliance of kosovar businesses, are going to cost your country up to 500 million euros by the end of this year. you're losing access to infrastructure grants, to other investments from brussels. you can't — with your weak economy, you can't afford to lose this financial and economic support. so what are you going to do? we have had 7.35% of gdp as economic growth averaged in these two years since i'm in power. exports doubled in two years, fdis doubled in two years, tax revenues increased by two thirds, and it's such a shame now to put these sanctions on kosovo. your own business community says "albin kurti must come

to his senses when it comes to re—establishing good relations with the eu and us". i'm doing my best but i cannot surrender a democratic republic to this fascist militia in the north. bill clinton, just the other day, made a speech in tirana, where he said "it is time for the albanians" — and he meant the albanians in kosovo, because he was talking about the kosovo crisis, who are now in the majority — "they must stop this foolishness", he said. "what major political issue can possibly be advanced by arguing how four little towns are run?" clinton says "stop the foolishness". are you prepared to? well, i'm not being a fool but i am neither being fooled. so i'm prime minister of a democratic republic. rule of law, the most democratic country has the most professional police, and we're very thankful for the contribution of president clinton, who actually in tirana said the serbs shouldn't have boycotted the elections, they should have voted,

and this is the root cause — the lack of participation in democratic process. low turnout, hollow legitimacy, i recognise early elections. this much i can do. and article 72 of local self—government law on local self—government says that, with 20% of electoral body in a municipality, they can start the process to trigger early elections. let's do that. i'm going to help. so you cannot from the streets with militia get into mayor's office. only through democratic processes. but you know that the serbs aren't going to go back into the municipal offices. they're not going to agree to participate in new elections, unless you make a promise to give them this autonomous association of serb communities. if you won't give them that, even if you have new elections in those communities, the serbs won't take part — so you aren't really achieving anything. do you have a solution, which might solve this problem? i have offered, again, a model,

which serbia already accepted with croatia. croatia is a success story of eu and nato membership. with respect, the serbs in your country are not interested in what happened in croatia. what they want is the delivery on a promise made to them in 2013. in these 15 years since we declared independence, average annual budget allocated per municipality, per capita, is 62% higherfor serb majority municipalities than for the rest. we have been privileging them all of the time. the problem is not to satisfy serbs. the problem is that i cannot satisfy belgrade for the losses caused to serbia's estate by the genocidal regime of milosevic. this is the problem. the problem is in belgrade, not among serbian community. people are generally good and peaceful. i believe in people. but you have autocrats who destroy this goodness. prime minister, it's notjust

about your foreign partners who are worried and frustrated with you right now — also, many people here in kosovo are worried. one of the leaders of the opposition democratic party, memli krasniqi, he said "you", you, mr kurti, "are playing with fire." and many kosovans are aware of your track record. you are a hotheaded politician. in different parts of your career, you've spent time in prison for political protest, you released tear gas inside the kosovan parliament back in 2015 — you even injured yourself, i think — in 2018, you were found guilty of the illegal use of weapons and obstructing officials doing their duties. you're known as an impulsive, hotheaded, nationalist politician. you may push this too far. over a glass of wine, the two of us can discuss long about about my political activism and my experience in the past as opposition leader and so on and so forth, but this is not about me,

and i am not alone. the vast majority of people of kosovo think that we should not give up on the rule of law. i am prime minister also of serbs. i have a serbian minister, nenad rasic. three municipalities in the north have serbian deputy mayors — dragana miletiq in leposaviq, katarina adjancic in north mitrovica, and sladjana pantovic in zvecan. i collaborate with serbs. but serbs who vucic is paying to sabotage the state of kosovo are a very peculiar kind. these are the privileged minority within the serbian minority. i'm not going to give up to them. the problem is, and i'm looking at that document there, the original document — declaration of independence of kosovo in 2008. since then, what really has kosovo achieved? you haven't normalised relations with serbia, you have the recognition of more than 100 countries, but significant countries,

like russia and china — even five members of the european union — still do not recognise kosovo. your economy is in a terrible mess, hundreds of thousands of your own people have left kosovo to find work in the european union. can you honestly say, some, what, 15 years after that document was signed, that you are delivering? yes. we are a success story of nato intervention to stop the genocide of serbia, and we are a success story of democratic and economic progress working hand—in—hand. all the seven members of the g7 group recognise kosovo. we have 117 recognitions, and we are going to continue. kosovo is here to stay, and i'm here to serve. i understand politics as public service to the people, and i'm democratically elected, two years ago, with a landslide victory — the biggest transformation of government in kosovo

since we declared independence. and i'm with full optimism that we are going to succeed. this is making nervous both belgrade and moscow, and that's why their nervousness is turning into violence in the northern part of my country. but we will prevail this time, as well. a final, very brief thought — can you guarantee to me that there will not be renewal of conflict, of war, in the balkans, over kosovo? you have my guarantee that the government of kosovo by no means will contribute to escalation, will do everything for de—escalation. i offered to sign the basic treaty for normalisation — belgrade refused. so you have my goodwill, good faith, and good intentions, and i am the guarantee that both eu and us, as values and strategic interests, will be nurtured and prevail in my country.

prime minister kurti, it has been a pleasure to talk to you. thank you very much indeed. thank you very much. hello. we've had some big contrasts in our weather so far this year. blocked patterns, you might say. when they come along, they stay for quite some time. for example, february turned out to be the driest for 30 years. it was really quite persistent. but almost overnight we changed the month and the weather changed. it was wet, the sixth wettest march on record. and then we've had those temperature contrasts through spring. it took a long time to see any warmth, mid—may onwards, really. and then once the heat really

arrived, we had flaming june, the hottestjune on record here in the uk. and now we're in july we've changed the weather again. it's been very unsettled, temperatures around about average, and it looks set to say for the next six to ten days, largely unsettled as well. we won't be without sunshine and some warmth, but with these low pressures close by, one just moving away towards thursday, another one hot on its heels. it's all, it's off and down to the position of the jet stream. there's upper level winds that drive our weather systems. and right now they're driving those low pressure systems in off the atlantic. so wednesday, again, will be another day of sunny spells and showers. frequent and heavy in northern and western parts, particularly scotland, northern ireland, northern england. a slight change in wind direction for england and wales, from the south—westerly breeze we've had in recent days to more of a westerly means we'lljust drop the humidity a little bit more, so fresher feel. but there will be with that breeze showers and heavy as they've been in recent days intense downpours with hail and thunder.

they tend to ease a little bit through the night and temperatures will fall back to probably single figures in the countryside. certainly more comfortable nights for sleeping, i think, into wednesday and into thursday. but that low pressure is then starting to move back in off the atlantic. so thursday sees this brief bump of high pressure in southern areas, perhaps fewer showers and less heavy showers, but not further north. we're still close to the area of low pressure. the winds are lighter, so the showers are like to be really quite lengthy with some torrential downpours once again. lots of spray, lots of standing water to contend with on the faster routes in the coming days with those showers. and then it's a very brief ridge of high pressure because by the time we get to friday, we've got this next low pressure winding itself up to bring us some more prolonged spell of heavy rain. and again, because there's some warmer air being drawn up from the tropics, it will really be quite heavy that rain, probably thundery as well. it'll be warm though and it

looks quite windy too. and that then meanders its way slowly eastwards across the uk during the course of saturday. so the persistent rain spreads northwards. it gives way to, heavy, frequent, showers coming around that area of low pressure blowing in on that southerly wind. so at least it's a slightly warmer direction once again, although probably not realised the highest temperatures as you could see, because there'll be more cloud and a lot of showers. and there it is as we go into the second part of the weekend. still with us, that low pressure, it starts to briefly move out of the way on sunday. so perhaps fewer showers sunday. but again, its low pressure that's dominating. we've got that westerly winds so hit and miss. the devil really in the detail for the showers. but of course, as always with showers, there'll be some sunny and warm spells in between. what about into next week? well, there's that low pressure moving away, perhaps the ridge of high pressure close to southern areas, but always, i think, dominated by low pressure, particularly towards the north

and further downpours.

to a second individual. welcome to newsday, welcome to newsday, reporting live from reporting live from singapore, i'm mariko 0i. the headlines... the sun newspaper publishes new claims about the bbc presenter at the centre of the crisis — saying he broke lockdown rules to meet a younger person it comes as bbc news reveals the male presenter sent abusive

and menacing messages