The new Kosovo parliament met Friday for its first session after November 17 elections, meeting a legal deadline, but still without an agreement on a ruling coalition, according to dpa. The new legislators were sworn in and administrative committees appointed, but parliament adjourned until January 9 without naming the speaker. That signals that the anticipated alliance of two largest parties remains elusive despite the paramount agenda of declaring Kosovo's independence from Serbia. Designated prime minister Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK) won the most seats, 37, in the assembly of 120. He had been widely expected to ally the late independence icon Ibrahim Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), with 25 votes. The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) head, Joachim Ruecker, said that he expected the parliament to vote both on the speaker and the new cabinet next Wednesday. The Kosovo leadership, representing the will of the majority Albanians, promised to declare independence from Serbia on a short order after the parliamentary is in place. According to a tentative agenda, Pristina would wait out a decision by the European Union to send a law-enforcing mission instead of UNMIK in late January and the Serbian presidential election run-off on February 3, before making the move. However, a government must first be in place. Should Thaci fail to agree a coalition with LDK, he would have to look for a three-way partnership with smaller parties or to repeat elections. The provisional speaker, the oldest deputy Mark Krasniqi, on told reporters that "independence was not on the agenda today." Albanians - 90 per cent of the 2.2 million people in Kosovo - hope that independence and international credits would quickly better the miserable economy and cut the soaring, 40-per-cent unemployment. Their bid to cut loose from Serbia is backed by the United States and the vast majority of European Union countries, but is hotly contested by Serbia, which has support from Russia, which has so far blocked Kosovo's independence in the UN. Serbia insists on sovereignty over the province though it has only nominally remained its territory since NATO ousted Belgrade's security forces to end ethnic bloodshed there in 1999. Talks between Belgrade and Pristina held in 2006 and 2007 have failed to bring the hostile sides any closer to a mutually acceptable outcome for Kosovo. Amid a growing impatience and threats of renewed violence and instability, The stalemate appears to leave only a unilateral declaration of independence by Pristina, followed by a series of recognitions by supportive countries.
