welcome to hardtalk. welcome to pristina and thank you for having me. well, it s a great pleasure to be in your office. prime minister, how close has kosovo come to seeing a renewal of conflict in the last few months? it has been very heavy because the two extremist terrorist organisations, which are being financed by serbia, and from where they also receive their orders, civil protection and the northern brigade have been very active and first intimidating serbs and serbian candidate, who would like to vote and run in elections, and second, in attacking our police, journalists but, first and foremost, nato soldiers on 29 may. you ve chosen, in that answer, to pile all of the blame on your serbian minority population. that is not the way the international community sees things right now? i never blame serbian minority population. they are 4% of population in kosovo, less than half of them live north of the river ibar, but i was claiming two of them live north of the river iba
well, it s a great pleasure to be in your office. prime minister, how close has kosovo come to seeing a renewal of conflict in the last few months? it has been very heavy because the two extremist terrorist organisations, which are being financed by serbia, and from where they also receive their orders, civil protection and the northern brigade have been very active and first intimidating serbs and serbian candidate, who would like to vote and run in elections, and second, in attacking our police, journalists but, first and foremost, nato soldiers on 29 may. you ve chosen, in that answer, to pile all of the blame on your serbian minority population. that is not the way the international community sees things right now. i never blame serbian minority population. they are 4% of population in kosovo, less than half of them live north of the river ibar, but i was blaming two specific organisations, and also belgrade who is controlling them, for the violent riots, for the violent
rule it out in advance. certainly, within the transatlantic community, we re divided on some issues. not concerning the strategy, but certainly the tactics. ok, i m going to press you on this, because you say poland at least has a schedule for this? i would say it is better to think about the conditions that are to be met, rather than to set a concrete date. but you are pressing me now? i am pressing you, because i also want to say, if the conditions are to be met, does that mean a greater emphasis on getting this war done? that s true, but there are certain conditions concerning the integration of ukrainian armed forces, strategy, planning and so on, so this summit at vilnius will bring the country closer to the allies. so this is interesting, because it seems that poland is absolutely leading the way on the nato move now? well, we set out our position with the united states for example, which are equally concerned about this. we share our position with the baltic states,
because there is we have to stay focused on the fight we have ahead and the threat we see in american democracy. that is the extremists coming out of the republican party. you, of course, are a south carolina ura south carolinian. that is your home state. and the first primary, it s supposed to be the first primary despite ongoing pushback from other states. president biden is visiting south carolina, revisiting how important it is. it is not a swing state. my question for you is, why south carolina? why not georgia or north carolina? there are more swing states. why south carolina? well, you know south carolina has been in the running now for almost 2 decades. and if you look at the other early state party or state during that time, you look at iowa, new hampshire, nevada, south carolina has been the best indicator. i think the only primary in which south carolina did not choose the eventual nominee of the democratic party was when john edwards and john kerry