Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06PRISTINA734
2006-09-05 20:02:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Pristina
Cable title:  

KOSOVO: PRESIDENT SEJDIU NOMINATED FOR POSITION OF

Tags:  PGOV PREL UNMIK YI 
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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000734 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/SCE, NSC FOR BRAUN, USUN FOR DREW
SCHUFLETOWSKI, USOSCE FOR STEVE STEGER

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/05/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL UNMIK YI
SUBJECT: KOSOVO: PRESIDENT SEJDIU NOMINATED FOR POSITION OF
LDK PARTY PRESIDENT, TENSIONS GROW WITH OPPOSITION PDK

REF: PRISTINA 696

Classified By: COM Tina S. Kaidanow for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000734

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

DEPT FOR EUR/SCE, NSC FOR BRAUN, USUN FOR DREW
SCHUFLETOWSKI, USOSCE FOR STEVE STEGER

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/05/2016
TAGS: PGOV PREL UNMIK YI
SUBJECT: KOSOVO: PRESIDENT SEJDIU NOMINATED FOR POSITION OF
LDK PARTY PRESIDENT, TENSIONS GROW WITH OPPOSITION PDK

REF: PRISTINA 696

Classified By: COM Tina S. Kaidanow for reasons 1.4 (B) and (D).


1. (C) SUMMARY: After a fast moving series of events over
the Labor Day weekend, the influential presidency of the
Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK),Kosovo's largest party,
decided September 5 to nominate President Fatmir Sejdiu as
its candidate for the position of party president. Sejdiu is
seen by many as a unifying figure within the LDK and Kosovo
at large. Sejdiu will go head-to-head with the divisive and
combative former Assembly speaker Nexhat Daci, also a
candidate, as the LDK begins a two-month process to select
its next leader to replace former President Ibrahim Rugova,
who passed away in January 2006. Sejdiu's candidacy has the
virtue of providing a single, integrating force within the
party to oppose Daci, a role that no other LDK figure has the
stature or support to play. UNMIK has also recognized the
benefits to party (and ultimately Kosovo) stability by
finding no legal obstacle to his candidacy.

2, (C) Summary, cont. Neverthless, there may be some rough
and tumble politics ahead as opposition PDK party leader (and
Unity Team member) Hashim Thaci uses the pretext of the
Sejdiu LDK candidacy and the alleged "politicization" of the
Kosovar presidency to threaten his own withdrawal from the
negotiating team. COM made clear in a pointed phone call to
Thaci that he would be held accountable for any cracks in the
Unity Team facade. UNMIK convened Contact Group, EU and OSCE
reps late on Sept. 5 to solicit support for its legal ruling
on Sejdiu's ability to run for the LDK presidency; despite
some anxiety over the impact of events on the Unity Team, CG
reps agreed that the interpretation of the constitutional
framework was correct and that Thaci should hear a firm
common line, warning him against doing anything precipitous.
End Summary.

Sejdiu is Candidate for LDK President


3. (C) The presidency of the Democratic League of Kosovo

(LDK) decided in its meeting on September 5 to nominate
Fatmir Sejdiu, the president of Kosovo and the LDK's former
secretary general, as its candidate for the vacated post of

SIPDIS
party president. Kole Berisha, LDK second vice president and
current president of the Kosovo Assembly, told Post that the
presidency approved Sejdiu's candidacy with 13 votes in
favor, 3 against and 2 abstentions. In a statement issued by
the LDK-affiliated Kosovo Information Center shortly after
the meeting, President Sejdiu -- who was not present for the
deliberations -- said he would accept the LDK presidency's
nomination.


4. (C) Berisha privately described the meeting as difficult
and tense. He noted that several presidency members,
commonly associated with the late president's controversial
security advisor Rame Maraj and now supporting the candidacy
of Nexhat Daci (including Adem Salihaj, Salih Cacaj, Shekfi
Gashi, Lulezim Zeneli and Sejde Tolaj),opposed the idea of
nominating a single LDK presidency candidate. Berisha also
noted the abstention of Alush Gashi, a presidency member and
head of the LDK caucus in the Kosovo Assembly, who harbored
(in vain) his own aspirations at the chairmanship. Another
potential candidate for party president, Kosovo Deputy Prime
Minister Lutfi Haziri, apparently also quietly sought party
support, but, like Gashi, found none among his elder
colleagues.


5. (C) Eqrem Kryeziu, LDK first vice president and mayor of
Prizren, told the media after the meeting that the presidency
was compelled to present its candidate after Daci, who was
ousted as Assembly speaker in March 2006 (and is now under
investigation for questionable spending practices during his
tenure),presented his candidacy months ago and campaigned
both in and outside of Kosovo. Kryeziu also stressed that
the LDK presidency faced strong pressure from its membership
to present a unified candidate for the upcoming internal
elections. (Note: Daci made public his candidacy in an

PRISTINA 00000734 002 OF 003


interview with VOA Albanian Service during a June 2006 visit
to the U.S., shortly after his ouster from the Assembly
speakership. Thanks to younger party members Zeneli and
Tolaj, Daci has enjoyed the support of a segment of the LDK
youth chapter, whose events throughout Kosovo have served as
staging grounds for his campaign. Daci's cause has also been
joined by key LDK diaspora chapters in Sweden and elsewhere.
Other Daci supporters include senior LDK figure Adem Salihaj,
former deputy prime minister before also being ousted in
March 2006; Salihaj evidently joined forces with other party
members sidelined in the March timeframe, including Rame
Maraj, to challenge the LDK "old guard" in today's presidency
meeting. After the meeting, Salihaj complained to the media
about alleged "violations of internal LDK rules and
imposition of a preferred candidate.")


6. (C) The LDK presidency's decision comes on the eve of the
launch of the party's two-month long internal elections
process scheduled to begin September 7. Local LDK branches
will now meet and decide whom to support; the process will
culminate with the party's general assembly, likely to be
held in mid-November, at which the new party president will
be elected. The seat of the LDK president has been vacant
since February 23, 2005, when the late Kosovo President and
the first and only president of the LDK, Ibrahim Rugova,
resigned as party president to meet a constitutional
requirement prohibiting the president of Kosovo from holding
other political office. Adhering to the same constitutional
requirement, Sejdiu resigned as LDK secretary-general on May
25, 2006, but nevertheless remained a member of the LDK
presidency.

Opposition PDK Uses LDK Events to Seek Political Gain,
Threaten Walkout of Unity Team


7. (C) The LDK presidency nomination of Sejdiu was in part
the result of an UNMIK legal judgement, communicated early
September 5 to Sejdiu by SRSG Ruecker and PDSRSG Steve
Schook, that Kosovo's constitutional framework did not
prohibit Sejdiu running as a candidate for the party
president, though he would not be permitted ultimately to
hold both positions. UNMIK's considered decision, however,
did not preclude opposition PDK party leader Hashim Thaci
from using the prospect of a Sejdiu candidacy to cry foul and
threaten a walkout from the multi-party Unity Team, scheduled
to resume technical negotations on status-related issues in
Vienna September 7 and 8. Thaci -- who has long aspired to
attain the post of Kosovo prime minister and believes that an
alliance with the LDK's Daci is the quickest way to get there
-- asserted aggressively in conversations with Schook,
Ruecker and others that Sejdiu's actions were "politicizing"
Kosovo's presidency and consequently affecting the unity of
the negotiating team, and that he would have "no choice" but
to withdraw from the team if Sejdiu and the LDK proceeded as
planned.


8. (C) UNMIK convened Contact Group, EU, and OSCE reps the
afternoon of September 5 to review the bidding and seek
support for its legal interpretation of the Kosovo
constitutional framework. Despite anxiety among some of
those present over the prospect of cracks in the Unity Team
as a result of Thaci's threats, all agreed that a literal
reading of the framework provided no grounds to prevent
Sejdiu from running -- though not to use the office of the
Kosovo Presidency for campaign purposes, nor in fact to
campaign in any way using his status as Kosovo President.
Many in the room agreed that LDK unity was an overriding
imperative, and that Sejdiu was in all probability the only
candidate who could with certainty win over the highly
problematic Daci. After some debate on this point, CG and
other reps decided that, in the context of their support for
UNMIK's legal decision and notwithstanding different
political judgements about the wisdom of Sejdiu's candidacy,
they needed to be firm and clear with Thaci that he would be
held accountable for any move to undermine the Unity Team.
COM communicated this point to Thaci in a phone call, noting
that Sejdiu's candidacy was fully in keeping with UNMIK's

PRISTINA 00000734 003 OF 003


legal judgement and that Thaci needed to think very carefully
before taking any move that he could not reverse. Thaci was
non-committal, claiming that his response would be keyed to
Sejdiu's action and calling UNMIK's decision "illegitimate,"
though it was clear he understood the message.

Comment


9. (C) We cannot preclude the possibility that Thaci will
make the rash move of quitting the negotiating team and
withdrawing his support for the overall negotiating process
-- a purely political action motivated by his desire to
influence events in the LDK in favor of Nexhet Daci and
further the PDK's prospects of entering government before the
next Kosovo elections. He has made threats before to abandon
the Team, but the LDK's decision to run Sejdiu for party
president may give Thaci just the excuse he thinks he needs
to do what he's been toying with for weeks if not months:
seize on the difficult decentralization and other
status-related decisions ahead -- which have already raised
the volume of local criticism leveled at the Unity Team -- to
abandon ship and join the negative chorus. Our soundings
indicate that he does not have full support for this course
among his party membership, but Thaci takes little counsel
from anyone but himself. Still, we are using all avenues
available within the PDK, including direct intervention with
Thaci, to drive our points home.


10. (C) Comment, cont. The Sejdiu candidacy is not ideal by
any means, but it is, in our judgement, probably the only way
the party leadership could be fully sure of combatting the
encroaching Daci tide. (This is an opinion strongly shared
by many local analysts outside the LDK, including among
others Unity Team Coordinator Blerim Shala.) LDK party
leaders remember the agony they went through only months ago
in ousting Daci and other key opponents of reform, and wanted
to be sure they did not face the same challenge again. A
close reading of Kosovo's constitutional framework also made
it clear there was no legal prohibition against Sejdiu
running. In this sensitive environment, we need to reaffirm
the limits UNMIK has imposed on Sejdiu in terms of his
candidacy and the choice he will ultimately face in deciding
which position to hold, but not allow outside elements --
namely Thaci and the PDK -- to drive the agenda for their own
political gain. We will continue to report on developments
over the next few days as the rough and tumble (both within
the LDK and in the wider political sphere) unfolds.


11. (U) U.S. Office Pristina clears this cable in its
entirety for release to U.N. Special Envoy for Kosovo Martti
Ahtisaari.
KAIDANOW