Agim Çeku

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Agim Çeku

Agim Çeku (born 29 October 1960 in Peja/Peć ^{[citation needed]}) is the Prime Minister of Kosovo.^[1]

Çeku is ethnically Albanian.

He is a former commander of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). He served as an officer in the Croatian army during the war with the breakaway Republic of Serbian Krajina, the Kosovo Liberation Army during the 1999 Kosovo War, and then commanded the KPC after the war.

He graduated from the Belgrade military academy and joined the Yugoslav People's Army as an artillery captain. He moved to the newly-formed Croatian Army in 1991 as Croatia made its bid for independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

He was closely involved in the subsequent war against Serbia and the breakaway Republic of Serbian Krajina, suffering wounds during fighting at the Medak Pocket in September 1993. He helped to update the doctrine and tactics of the Croatian Army over the next two years, planning the successful Operation Storm in 1995 that ended the war in Croatia and expelled most of the Serbian population from Croatia. He was decorated nine times by Croatia for his service and rose to the rank of brigadier-general.

Çeku developed contacts with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), a guerrilla group fighting Serbian rule in Kosovo, some time in the mid-1990s. He resigned from the Croatian Army in February 1999. When the Kosovo War broke out in March 1999, the KLA initially did very badly against Serbian/Yugoslav forces, due in part to poor leadership under its senior commander Suleiman "Sultan" Selimi, a militarily inexperienced individual who had been given the post largely because of his influence in the Drenica region (the KLA's heartland).

In May 1999, Çeku was appointed the KLA's chief of staff, replacing Selimi. He immediately set about reorganising the KLA and implementing a proper military structure within the organization. In the closing days of the Kosovo War, the KLA began providing systematic intelligence to NATO as well as mounting attacks to lure Serbian forces into the open, enabling NATO warplanes to bomb them. According to reports at the time, Çeku was the principal liaison between NATO and the KLA.

Following the end of the war in June 1999, Çeku oversaw the demilitarisation of the KLA and its transformation into the Kosovo Protection Corps, an ostensibly civilian organization charged with disaster response, demining, search and response and humanitarian projects. Although the international community insisted the KPC was a civilian organization, Ceku and its membership said they believed the KPC should evolve into the future Army of an independent Kosovo. Ceku managed ably many difficult challenges for the KPC, including allegations that its members were supporting the ethnic Albanian insurgency in Macedonia in 2001.

The Serbian Government has made repeated claims that Çeku is a war criminal, though Serbia's jurisdiction in the matter is not recognised by the United Nations or the international community. With the very same instruments, the Serbian Government has also charged Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and former SRSG Dr. Bernard Kouchner of war crimes as well. Meanwhile, the ICTY has clearly stated that all indictments have been published and no further indictments are planned. Despite the fact that PM Çeku is not suspected of any crime by any competent international authority the Serbian government caused PM Çeku to be briefly detained in Slovenia in October 2003 and in Hungary in March 2004 under a Serbian arrest warrant. Çeku was quickly released in both cases after the UN intervened.

On 2 March 2006, following the resignation of Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi, President Fatmir Sejdiu asked Çeku to serve as the next Prime Minister. Serbia condemned the nomination as it considers him a war criminal[1], but the UN's administrator ins Kosovo, Søren Jessen-Petersen, commended the decision.

On 10 March 2006 Çeku was elected as the Prime Minister of Kosovo by the Kosovo Assembly. After being sworn in, he declared he wanted the full independence of Kosovo, while promising to protect the rights of the Serbian minority. Ceku's appointment was backed by former Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, who resigned in early 2005 after the ICTY indicted him for war crimes. In his first one hundred days in office, Ceku prioritized the implementation of the UN-endorsed "Standards" for good governance and multi-ethnicity, earning praise from Soren Jessen-Petersen and the Contact Group countries. On 24 July 2006, Ceku traveled to Vienna for the first high-level meeting between the Presidents and Prime Ministers of Serbia and Kosovo to discuss Kosovo's future status.

He is married to a Croatian wife and together they have three children. The family lives between Kosovo and the Croatian town of Zadar, where they reside most of the time.