{"id":9522,"date":"2010-12-14T10:48:06","date_gmt":"2010-12-14T07:48:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/?p=9522"},"modified":"2010-12-14T15:55:11","modified_gmt":"2010-12-14T12:55:11","slug":"democratic-party-won-the-kosovo-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/democratic-party-won-the-kosovo-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Democratic Party won the Kosovo elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci’s party finished first in national parliamentary elections, setting the stage for negotiations aimed at rapprochement between the newly independent Balkan state and Serbia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Preliminary results released late Monday showed that Mr. Thaci’s Democratic Party of Kosovo had received about 33% of the votes cast in Sunday’s polls\u2014giving it an edge in trying to form a governing coalition.<\/p>\n

Mr. Thaci’s partner in the last government, the Democratic League of Kosovo, finished in second place, with more than 23% of the vote, according to Kosovo’s Election Commission.<\/p>\n

“The elections were a referendum on the European future of Kosovo,” Mr. Thaci said after declaring victory. The vote was the first general election in Kosovo, a former province of Serbia, since it declared formal independence in 2008.<\/p>\n

Kosovo is looking to European Union-brokered talks with its former political masters in Belgrade to help speed its economic integration with the rest of the continent.<\/p>\n

Still, a surprisingly strong showing by the so-called Self-Determination movement, which wants to unite Kosovo with neighboring Albania, shows the challenges that remain to reconciliation in the Balkans.<\/p>\n

More than 90% of people in Kosovo are ethnic Albanians. In 1999, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization waged an air war against Serbia in an effort to stop Serb attacks on the Albanians.<\/p>\n

Serbia has refused to recognize Kosovo’s independence, and continues to govern the ethnic-Serb dominated north of Kosovo as though it were part of Serbia.<\/p>\n

Belgrade also bars exports from landlocked Kosovo from crossing its territory, a significant impediment to trade for one of Europe’s poorest economies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci’s party finished first in national parliamentary elections…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":9523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,63,17,118,101],"tags":[13483,13486,13482,591,13484,2061],"class_list":["post-9522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-daily","category-europe","category-hot","category-politics","tag-albanians","tag-balkan-state","tag-kosova","tag-nato","tag-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-serbia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nationalturk.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}