Kurti: Without the surrender of Radoicic and withdrawal of Brnabic’s letter, there will be no high-level dialogue

Kosovo’s caretaker Prime Minister Albin Kurti said last evening that he will not meet with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic within the framework of the Kosovo–Serbia dialogue without the prior surrender of Milan Radoicic and the withdrawal of former Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic’s letter to Brussels, Koha reported.

“Perhaps she (Marta Kos) had information that Belgrade’s position would change, but Belgrade must extradite Milan Radoicic together with another 44 paramilitary criminals who killed Sergeant, our hero, Afrim Bunjaku, and then continued with similar attacks such as the blowing up of the Ibar-Lepenac canal. The first happened in September 2023, the second in November 2024. Radoicic must surrender, and the letter by Ana Brnabic, who was the prime minister at the time, in which she says that Serbia does not respect Kosovo’s territorial integrity, must be withdrawn. There has been no meeting in Brussels within the dialogue for two and a half years. Even after June 7, these conditions must be fulfilled,” Kurti said, as reported by Koha.

Regarding the deployment of the Kosovo Security Force in the north, Kurti said in an interview for KTV that the day for that will come, but in cooperation with NATO.

He is convinced that the snap parliamentary elections on June 7 will be the last elections in Kosovo this year.

“We did not need these elections. Paradoxically, there is consensus that everyone agrees they were unnecessary,” Kurti noted.

He said that the meetings he had with opposition leaders were good and took place in a constructive atmosphere, but that only he offered proposals for the president.

“The opposition parties changed their behavior and appearance, but not their positions. After we failed to find a consensus figure, I offered a ‘co-government,’ just as I proposed in 2025,” Kurti said.

He repeated that he offered the position of deputy prime minister and four ministries to Democratic League of Kosovo leader Lumir Abdixhiku and added that the problem was not in the proposals he made, but in the opposition parties’ rejection of them.

Kurti expects Self-Determination to win 60 percent of the vote in the elections.

“That is our goal. We want to keep winning more and more. I do not need another victory, but it seems the opposition needs another defeat,” Kurti said.

According to him, the opposition does not understand the importance of institutions.

“They think I am the state. I am not the state. I am only the prime minister, and a caretaker prime minister at that. I am not Louis XIV,” Kurti said.

He also stated that former President Vjosa Osmani wants power and has political ambitions, which he said is completely legitimate in a democracy.

He stressed that “they do not have a vote for Osmani as president” and that Kosovo’s president should be a person outside the political scene.

He also commented on Vjosa Osmani’s statement regarding the Bondsteel base.

“Bondsteel owes nothing to anyone, because it already pays rent for the private property it uses. For the sake of our democracy and partly to strengthen the opposition, it is important that they do not go to America and use it to attack Kosovo’s prime minister. And Osmani does that too. The opposition bloc has a completely wrong way of operating, using America to attack Albin Kurti. Am I really so powerful that they use America to attack me? That is irrational,” Kurti said.

Regarding Osmani’s claims that Kurti held a several-hour meeting in one room with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the then EU envoy for the Kosovo–Serbia dialogue Miroslav Lajcak, without informing the public, Kurti said that he had never met Vucic alone in a room, nor only with envoy Lajcak, because there are always people taking notes, and that he always informed the public about everything.

Kurti said there has been no prime minister who respected the opposition more than he did.

Regarding the World Atlas report that ranked Kosovo after Moldova as the poorest in Europe, Kurti said that the economic progress during his five years in power cannot be denied.

“We were very poor. Now we are less poor, but we are still among the poorest. That is the reality. But if you look at the progress over these years, the achievements are undoubtedly undeniable,” Kurti said.

He also claims that corruption in Kosovo has been stopped.

Kurti announced that he intends to form a Gendarmerie in the next mandate.

“We will form a Gendarmerie in the next mandate. The Gendarmerie will mainly deal with fighting crime and corruption in border areas. It will fight terrorism... The Gendarmerie is something between the police and the army. You know, Italy has the Carabinieri and France has the gendarmes. We will have our own Gendarmerie in the Republic of Kosovo,” Kurti said on KTV’s “Interaktiv” program.