Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti on Monday accused an American diplomat of having orchestrated the fall in March of the coalition government formed two months earlier in this Balkan country, in order to pave the way for the signing of an agreement controversial with Serbia.
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Albin Kurti, a left-wing reformer who now heads the government on an interim basis while waiting for another to be formed, said Richard Grenell had exerted strong "pressure" on his coalition partner to force him out , plunging Kosovo into a political crisis. He was speaking during a videoconference with foreign media in Pristina.
The American envoy, charged last year by Donald Trump with the delicate file of the relations between Serbia and his old province of Kosovo become an independent state, was "directly implied" in the overthrow of the government because he wanted to achieve an agreement between these two countries that would have resulted in changes to their borders, accused Albin Kurti. "My government was not ousted for anything other than because Ambassador Grenell is in a hurry to sign an agreement with Serbia, which I strongly believe is harmful because it includes an exchange of territories," said the Prime Minister. A project whose existence Richard Grenell quickly denied.
On Twitter, the diplomat replied that "there has been absolutely no discussion on exchanges of territories on his part and that this has never been mentioned by anyone in my presence". The American president appointed at the end of February this diplomat, then ambassador to Germany, to the sensitive post of acting director of national intelligence, the agency which oversees the American intelligence services. The Kosovar Prime Minister and his supporters claim to be victims of the maneuvers of President Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla and central figure in political life in Kosovo since the war of independence in 1998-99.
The October legislative elections had consecrated the defeat of the PDK's independence veterans but the mandate of President Thaci, their leader, does not end until 2021. Albin Kurti accused the head of state of having fomented a political crisis to keep control of business and finalize a project, supported by the United States, to exchange territories with Serbia. Serbia has never recognized the independence declared by Kosovo in 2008 and has campaigned to keep it away from international organizations, including the United Nations.