UK, remember your settings and improve government services. We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services. You have accepted additional cookies. You can change your cookie settings at any time. You have rejected additional cookies. During his visit, the Foreign Secretary addressed the Assembly of Kosovo.
He said:. Because 17 years ago, I was here in Pristina and I saw a very different city in those days. I was there when the British Army came in and I remember seeing the joy on the faces of villagers and how they threw roses in the path of the British Army vehicles. I remember seeing the burning mosques and the villages that were torched, sometimes razed almost to the ground, by the retreating forces.
I also remember the expressions of shock on the faces of refugees who were moving in great columns of tractors and carts away from ancestral farms, in many cases not to return. I wondered then, looking at Pristina, what the future would hold for this ancient and beautiful country, and what kind of government and society we were helping to create. Because we in NATO were unquestionably helping to create a new society. And I remember wondering whether we had got it right, and hoping that out of such pain and suffering a functioning democracy could be born.
And here is your answer to that question. At a time when the values I think we share, a belief in democracy and freedom and pluralism, when those values are by no means uncontested around world, Kosovo can be a powerful and shining example to the rest of the world of what can be achieved. We were allies then; we are allies now. And so, in a spirit of friendship, and the candour that comes with friendship, allow me to offer some thoughts about Kosovo today. You are an independent country, recognised now by other nations.
This means that you are responsible now for your own affairs. The duty to serve your people rests on your shoulders. The consequences that flow from that reality are momentous and challenging. Like many other political systems, yours must continually adapt and improve. The process of reform in Kosovo must not be allowed to stagnate. Rather than being machines for power and patronage, political parties should strive to serve the interests of every citizen. The people have a right β indeed an obligation β to demand more from their elected representatives and to hold us β their elected representatives - to account.
