Prishtina, December 01, 2017 – The President of the State, Hashim Thaçi, attended this evening the reception of the Embassy of Finland organized in Prishtina in honor of the 100th Anniversary of the Independence of the Finnish state.
President Thaçi said that for us in Kosovo, who are preparing to celebrate the first 10th Anniversary of our Republic, 100 years seem like a lot of years, but actually in the European history Finland can also be called a new state.
He said that he has always been impressed by how much Kosovo and Finland have in common.
“Both countries have a person in common, President Ahtisaari, the Peace Nobelist who was actually the right Finn, at the right time and in the right place, who made it possible for Kosovo to be freed once and for all from the danger of occupation”, stated President Thaçi
He emphasized that with President Ahtisaari he has spent hours in many stages of Kosovo’s state-building.
“Few people know that his concept for supervised independence became known in 1999, at a conference organized by President Nelson Mandela and UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan. Since that time President Ahtisaari realized that the glass which is once broken and bleeds the hand can not be put together in any form because the wound should be healed and the only healing for bloody Kosovo was independence”, he stressed.
President Thaçi also recalled President Ahtisaari’s story of how his passion for peace stems from the bad luck he had as a child, to remain a refugee when the Soviet Union annexed a Finnish province and over 400 thousand Finnish women, children and men remained without shelter and hungry in cold arctic weather.
“It is the strength of the Finnish people which made this state rise and didn’t let it get stuck in the vicious circle of hate and revenge, but to focus on development and peacemaking. The Soviet Union occupied Finland, but today little Finland has the best education in the world, the best standard of living and the most comprehensive rights for its residents”, he said.
President Thaçi added that this is perhaps the greatest lesson of this Finnish 100th anniversary.
“The nights in northern Europe, in Finland as well, during the winter are long and dark. But even during the longest nights of history, when horror and anxieties frightened the population and shook the state, Finland knew that always a long and beautiful summer that never ends arrives. Therefore, today, the Finnish government and people have consensus on progress, values, human rights, full equality between spouses with the principle that the majority should always be generous to the minority. This precious lesson, this example of Finnish progress, should be an inspiration for us in Kosovo”, he added.
President Thaçi has said that Kosovo has no more time to lose.
“We must give an end to our isolation by ratifying the agreement on marking the border line with Montenegro”.
The President welcomed Prime Minister Haradinaj’s initiative for the demarcation agreement with Montenegro to be processed from the Government to the Assembly of Kosovo.
He said that we need to establish the Association of Serb-majority Municipalities in Kosovo, to prove that we are a reliable state and people. “We must establish the Armed Forces of Kosovo, in order to give our modest contribution to the preservation of peace everywhere in the world. We must continue the dialogue on the normalization of relations with Serbia and reach the final peace and reconciliation agreement as soon as possible, as a key condition for the membership of the two respective states in the Euro-Atlantic structures”, he said.
At the end, President Thaçi also raised a toast to the valuable lessons he has received from President Ahtisaari, which, as he said, Finland now gives to the whole world.