Education is one of the key words on Kosovo politician's lips, but the reality  is far from the goals of the Ministry of Education which are summarised in the catch phrase "curriculum reform". Some progress has been achieved: recently, as a consequence of a new accreditation process, all private "universities" and colleges in Kosovo had to close their doors to new students - except the American University of Kosovo which is a branch of a US university. Nevertheless, the situation remains very difficult for youth belonging to a minority group (cf. this "NODE" report on minority rights in the Balkans (pdf), p. 66ff.). (more below)

The "first-ever-guide-in-English-that-is-only-about-Kosovo" (as ESI puts it in its newsletter) is out: the Bradt guide book to Kosovo. You can check out excerpts on the ESI website, e.g. a guided tour of Prizren, to Decan and Isniq (a village in Dukagjin).

As expected, the Kosovo-Troika reports that Pristina and Belgrade did not come to a mutually agreed solution concering the Kosovo status in the last 120 days (cf. AFP and NZZ). "The hour of the Europeans" has come in Kosovo, says a NZZ comment (cf. this blog). Indeed, Europe is a "magic word" for Kosovars, especially for young people in Kosovo, according to Beqe Cufaj, founder of the European Initiative in Kosovo and of the European Library (read more in a background article by Julia Encke/FAZ).

Preliminary results of yesterday's elections in Kosovo have been published by the civil society coalition “Democracy in Action” based on votes counted from 1756 out of 2323 polling stations - click here for an overview over the first results of the Assembly elections, the municipal and mayor elections. Turnout was very low with about 45% (8% lower than in 2004) and nearly 99% of Kosovo-Serbs boycotting the elections (a few days ago, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung criticised the election boycott as "children's games"). Check the website of the Central Election Commission for technical details on the elections and for official results (which are to be certified by  UNMIK on December 4, says BIRN).

"The trouble with conceptual art is that you cannot be sure whether something is a public toilet or an art installation until your art critic tells you. (...) An artist from Prishtina, Albert Heta, exhibited his work: he transformed the Serbian Embassy building into an Embassy of the Republic of Kosova. The first to react were the Serbian political parties in Montenegro and the Serbian Orthodox Church. According to them, Heta's work is an unprecedented scandal, 'a shame for Montenegro'. The priests said that most of the pieces of the Biennale were 'acts of insanity' and thereby made their opinion on contemporary art clear. Since the technique used in Heta's work is not scandalous, nor is the work visually beyond the conventional, it turns out that what is scandalous is that the Albanian flag waved in Montenegro , and that the author used what was once a Serbian Embassy to portray the existence of Kosova as an independent country. His work, obviously, succeeded."

Contact Group Ministerial Statement, New York, 20 September 2006:

(...) Ministers support the Special Envoy’s efforts to work with the parties in cooperation with the Contact Group to arrive at a realistic outcome that enhances regional stability, is acceptable to the people of Kosovo and preserves Kosovo's multiethnic character. Striving for a negotiated settlement should not obscure the fact that neither party can unilaterally block the status process from advancing. Ministers encouraged the Special Envoy to prepare a comprehensive proposal for a status settlement and on this basis to engage the parties in moving the negotiating process forward. (...)

"Serbia's foreign minister, Vuk Draskovic, claims that the future status of Kosovo is of utmost importance for Serbia's future, but like other Serbian politicians, he does not specify why it is so important. Does Serbia's economic or political future depend on the status of Kosovo? Or would the loss of Kosovo mean that Belgrade politicians had to face the real issues affecting Serbia's population: crime, corruption, quality of education, unemployment, health care, democracy and human rights, low living standards, isolation from the European Union?

At the same time, the ambivalence about the status of Kosovo suits politicians: Serbian politicians evoke the Kosovo myth in order to postpone addressing their real problems; their Kosovo Albanian counterparts can always blame the lack of independence as the source of all evils, including unemployment, crime, corruption, crumbling infrastructure and the failing economy. (Mirjana Tomic in the International Herald Tribune, 6.7.2006)

Of course [an agreement] was not to be expected and it was not the purpose to achieve concrete agreements in a specific field. This meeting served to present the various approaches of the two sides to decentralization and to explore common ground, and in this I think we were quite successful.

(Albert Rohan, deputy of the UN evoy M. Ahtisaari, at the press-conference after the first round of Pristina - Belgrade talks on 20-21.2.2006).

Ein entscheidendes Jahr für die Zukunft Kosovas und damit auch für die Zukunft der angrenzenden Länder hat angefangen.

Three interesting articles:

Nach einem etwas pessimistischen Kommentar von Andrej Invanji in der gestrigen TAZ, tut es gut, ein Interview zu lesen, welches von der üblichen Rhetorik abweicht: "Ein unabhängiges Kosovo ist vorstellbar"/Der liberale serbische Politiker Cedomir Jovanovic im Gespräch mit A. Ivanji (TAZ, 30.11.2005).

And one article in English: Jeta Xharra and Zana Limani on Kosovo-Albanian identity/ies and symbols.

The 21th November - an important date for the Western Balkans (3)