Kosovo Parliament elects Hashim Thaci as new president

February 26, 2016

PRISTINA, Kosovo (AP) — Kosovo's Parliament on Friday elected Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci as the country's new president in the absence of opposition lawmakers who accuse him of being responsible for two deals with Serbia and Montenegro that they reject.

The election committee said Thaci secured 71 votes among the 81 lawmakers that were present in the third round of voting after failing to reach the minimum requirements in the first two rounds. The other candidate, Rafet Rama, got no votes and 10 votes were declared invalid.

Many of the opposition lawmakers in the 120-seat Parliament were suspended from participation after disrupting the legislature with tear gas. Others left and only one remained at the election commission.

"With the greatest pleasure, with the highest responsibility, I will serve to everyone and be willing to cooperate with everyone, including the political parties and every segment of the Kosovan society," Thaci told The Associated Press.

The opposition has been disrupting the chamber since last September with attacks involving tear gas, pepper spray, whistles and water bottles to reject a deal between Kosovo and Serbia giving more powers to ethnic Serbs in Kosovo. In December, the Constitutional Court ruled that the agreement needed to be amended to conform to the constitution.

The opposition also rejects a border demarcation pact with Montenegro. "Someone who has violated the constitution cannot be Kosovo's president," the leader of the main opposition Self-Determination Movement Party, Visar Ymeri, said at a news conference.

The prospect of a Thaci-presidency has prompted thousands of opposition supporters to protest in the capital of Pristina, many hundreds of whom have been camping out in tents in the capital's Skanderbeg Square.

After learning that Thaci won the election, they threw Molotov cocktails and rocks outside Parliament, injuring 21 officers, police said. Police responded with tear gas and water guns to disperse them and five protesters were arrested. Officers also started to remove the tents raised at the Skanderbeg Square and blocked traffic on some streets surrounding Parliament.

Police said they found 39 Molotov cocktails and 38 other bottles with color paint by the tents. Molotov cocktails were also thrown against Prime Minister Isa Mustafa's home, according to police. Meanwhile, hundreds of Thaci's supporters celebrated his election walking along the capital's streets holding Kosovo, U.S. and Albanian flags and shouting his name while firecrackers lit the sky.

Many leading figures within the opposition were partners with Thaci — a former guerrilla leader — during the war, but later turned against him, accusing him of being power-hungry and corrupt. Critics also say the 47-year-old, who led the fighters of Kosovo's successful separatist war against Serbia in 1998-99, is not a unifying individual, which is what the Kosovo constitution requires.

"Thaci's election has closed that door," said Fatmir Limaj, one of his former close associates now in opposition, referring to attempts by incumbent President Ahtifete Jahjaga to resolve the political crisis.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008, although that is rejected by Serbia. As president, Thaci would deal with a special war crimes court created last year, which will have international judges and prosecutors try ethnic Albanian guerrillas for the alleged killing of civilian detainees, mostly Serbs, immediately after the war ended in 1999.

Thaci was mentioned in a 2010 Council of Europe report which claimed that leaders of the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Serbs, Roma and ethnic Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serbs.

Thaci denies the claims. Thaci has resigned as leader of the Democratic Party of Kosovo as required for his five-year term.

Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, and Gresa Kraja in Pristina, Kosovo, contributed to this report.

Ireland's divided lawmakers mull awkward pacts, 2nd vote

February 28, 2016

DUBLIN (AP) — Ireland's election has produced a parliament full of feuding factions and no obvious road to a majority government, spurring lawmakers to warn Sunday that the country could face a protracted political deadlock followed by a second election.

For the first time in Irish electoral history, the combined popular vote Friday for Ireland's two political heavyweights — the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael parties — fell below 50 percent as voters infuriated by austerity measures shifted their support to a Babel of anti-government voices.

The results left parliament with at least nine factions and a legion of loose-cannon independents, few of them easy partners for a coalition government, none of them numerous enough to make a difference on their own.

"There's a sense of bewilderment, first of all. We're a long way from sitting down together and talking about what our next options are," said Regina Doherty, a Fine Gael lawmaker for Meath, northwest of Dublin.

With 12 seats in Ireland's 158-member parliament still to be filled, the ruling Fine Gael won 46 seats, longtime foe Fianna Fail 42, the Irish nationalist Sinn Fein 22 and junior government partner Labour just six. An eye-popping array of tiny parties, umbrella groups and parochial mavericks won the rest.

Leading members of Fianna Fail — which rebounded in this vote just five years after facing electoral ruin for nearly bankrupting the country — said they would find it extremely hard to forge any coalition that keeps Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Fine Gael in power.

"I've just fought a difficult three-week campaign during which people said to me they want rid of this government, they don't want Enda Kenny as taoiseach anymore," said Fianna Fail lawmaker Willie O'Dea, using the formal Gaelic title for Ireland's premier. "Our supporting a Fine Gael government would be doing exactly what we told our voters we wouldn't do."

The trouble is, Ireland's voters have never produced a parliament like this before. And there's no third party strong enough to give Fianna Fail or Fine Gael a parliamentary majority of at least 79 seats. Both parties have ruled out working with Sinn Fein, the only party that could get either of them close.

When the new parliament convenes March 10 to elect a prime minister to appoint a government, both Kenny and Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin say they will put themselves forward as rival candidates. Failure to create a new government would mean Kenny's 5-year-old coalition with Labour continues indefinitely in a lame-duck caretaker role.

While government collapses and grueling coalition negotiations are par for the course in many parts of Europe — Spain has gone the past two months without a government deal; Belgium spent much of 2014 without one, too — this would be highly unusual in Ireland. The country prizes its political stability as a central selling point for the approximately 1,000 multinational companies that underpin Ireland's exports-driven economy.

The Irish, whose closest trading partners are Britain and the United States, have made a rapid economic turnaround under Kenny to lead European growth once again. But the government faces serious challenges to improve health and housing and ease the pressure on debt-struck households.

Leading lawmakers in both Fianna Fail and Fine Gael said they cannot see how two parties so long committed to tearing each other down can form a united Cabinet that survives for months, never mind five years. The two parties evolved from opposite sides of the civil war that followed Ireland's 1922 independence from Britain. Between them, they have led every Irish government over the past nine decades but have never shared power.

Ireland has not suffered back-to-back elections since 1982, but that specter loomed. Finance Minister Michael Noonan of Fine Gael, speaking from an election center in his native Limerick, said: "We may all be back here again very shortly."

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said his party has told grass-roots activists to prepare for a second vote in 2016. "We have put our people on a continued election standby," said Adams, who shifted his power base from Belfast to the border district of Louth in 2011 to lead his Northern Ireland-centric party's growth in the Republic of Ireland. "We said to our people: We don't know how this is going to turn out. Stay on alert. Take your posters down and save them. They could be going up again very soon."

An editorial cartoon in the Sunday Independent newspaper captured the national mood. In it, a reporter asks the Fine Gael and Fianna Fail leaders: "What next?" Kenny replies: "Stable chaos." Martin counters: "Chaotic stability."

Hungary's Orban: EU leaders don't want to stop the migrants

February 28, 2016

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Europe has the ability to stop the flow of migrants reaching the continent but its leaders have no plans to do so, Hungary's prime minister declared Sunday. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been at the forefront of those rejecting the refugees and asylum-seekers flooding into Europe due to conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. Hungary last year built razor-wire fences on its borders with Serbia and Croatia to stop the migrants from freely entering the country — moves that altered the flow of migrants across Europe.

"It is bad enough that Brussels cannot organize Europe's defense, but worse is that even the intention is missing," Orban said in his annual speech about the state of the country. Orban described the EU response to the migrant crisis as "absurd" and compared EU leadership to the captain of a ship about to collide who spends time "designating the non-smoking lifeboats instead of trying to avoid the collision."

"Europe's future is endangered primarily not by those who want to come here, but by those political, economic and intellectual leaders who are trying to transform Europe in opposition to the European people," Orban said, blaming German Chancellor Angela Merkel's welcoming response to refugees as one of the factors responsible for the crisis.

Orban said he had asked his interior and defense ministers to prepare to build new defenses on the Romanian border. "We will teach Brussels, the human traffickers and the migrants that Hungary is sovereign country," Orban told an audience of steadfast supporters who often interrupted his speech with applause.

Orban declared that mass migration was a "danger" that put at risk Hungary's achievements of the last few years and was not an answer to Europe's problems. "We cannot solve the demographic problems of the undeniably dwindling and aging European population with the Muslim world without losing our lifestyle, security and ourselves," Orban said. "Those coming here have no intention of adapting to our lifestyle."

In Rome, meanwhile, Pope Francis said a concerted response was needed to solve Europe's migrant problem so that countries share equally the burden of helping those fleeing war and other "inhumane" situations.

Francis praised Greece and other countries offering "generous" help while being on the front line of the arrivals. Speaking in St. Peter's Square on Sunday, Francis said a "concerted response can be more effective and distribute equally the weight" of helping the migrants.

Orban, however, said Hungary would continue to oppose EU plans for a quota system to redistribute over 100,000 migrants among its 28 nations and claimed Brussels was also looking to set up a "mandatory, permanent and continuous redistribution system" for the migrants.

"Brussels must be stopped," Orban said. "We can't allow them to force us ... to import the bitter fruits of their mistaken immigration policies. We don't want to and won't import crime, terrorism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism into Hungary."

Hungary has sued Brussels over the refugee quota plan and Orban said this week that the government was hoping to hold a national referendum on any further EU attempts to impose migrant quotas. As 2,000 opposition supporters protested against Orban, the prime minister said Hungarians did not have a "heart of stone" and wanted to help those in need.

"Most migrants are also victims of their collapsing governments of their countries, of bad international decisions and of human traffickers," Orban said. "We keep in mind the most important rule of assistance — if we help here, they will come here. If we help there, they will stay there."

Thousands stranded as Greece becomes a migrant 'warehouse'

February 27, 2016

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece is fast becoming the "warehouse of human beings" that its government has vowed not to allow. Hastily setup camps for refugees and other migrants are full. Thousands of people wait through the night, shivering in the cold at the Greek-Macedonian border, in the country's main port of Piraeus, in squares dotted around Athens, or on dozens of buses parked up and down Greece's main north-south highway.

On Thursday, hundreds of frustrated men, women and children abandoned their stranded buses or left refugee camps, setting off on a desperate trek dozens of kilometers (miles) long to reach a border they know is quickly shutting down to them.

About 20,000 migrants were in Greece on Thursday, Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said. Of those, Macedonia allowed just 100 people to cross over from Greece's Idomeni border area. By late Friday, not a single migrant had crossed into Macedonia that day, while 4,900 people waited nearby in heavy rain, according to Greek police.

Thousands more were heading north — about 40 busloads of people were waiting along Greece's main highway, while refugee camps in northern Greece and near Athens were full. Greece is mired in a full-blown diplomatic dispute with some EU countries over their border slowdowns and closures. Those border moves have left Greece and the migrants caught between an increasingly fractious Europe, where several countries are reluctant to accept more asylum-seekers, and Turkey, which has appeared unwilling or unable to staunch the torrent of people leaving in barely seaworthy smuggling boats for Greek islands.

Adding to the pressure is Greece's financial predicament. The country has been wracked by a financial crisis since 2010 and still depends on an international bailout for which it must pass yet more painful reforms. Those have led to widespread protests, including blockades on the country's highways by farmers who are furious at pension changes.

The vast majority of those reaching Greece, Europe's main gateway for migrants, have been Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis fleeing war at home "My only hope is to live in a safe place. That's enough for me actually," said 17-year-old Minhaj Ud Din Wahaj from Afghanistan's Wardak province. "We have been in war since 40 years, so I have been raised in war."

In Athens, hundreds of migrants mill around central Victoria Square, uncertain of where to go next. On Thursday, two men hanged themselves from a tree in the square but were rescued by bystanders. Police said the men were trying to draw attention to their predicament.

In the north, nearly 400 people scrambled out of a former military base set up as a refugee camp in Diavata, near the city of Thessaloniki, and began walking the 70 kilometers (43 miles) to Idomeni on the Macedonian border. Dozens more set off on foot from buses stuck on the highway, where farmers' blockades were hindering traffic.

Still more people flowed into the country, with dinghies full of migrants arriving on Greece's islands and hundreds more people piling on ferries heading to the main port of Piraeus. "We are escaping from war," said Rana, an English teacher from Syria arriving in Piraeus. She would not give her last name to protect those she left behind. "Our house is destroyed, and salaries in some places stopped. ... I think all the people ... seek the shelter and education for their kids."

But Europe appears increasingly unwilling to provide those basics. On the weekend of Feb. 20-21, Macedonia stopped allowing Afghans through. Other countries further up the line appeared to do the same. On Thursday, even Syrians and Iraqis were being allowed to cross over from Greece only at a trickle. Nadica V'ckova, a spokeswoman for Macedonia's crisis management department, told The Associated Press that Macedonia was restricting the entry of refugees to match the number leaving the country.

Bitter sniping has ensued between Greece and other EU members as Greece insists the EU's 28 nations share the refugee burden equally. "Greece, from now on, will not assent to agreements if the proportionate distribution of the burden and responsibility among all member states is not rendered obligatory," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told Parliament on Wednesday.

"We will not accept the transformation of our country to a permanent warehouse for human beings, while at the same time we continue to operate in Europe and at summit meetings as if nothing is happening," he declared. "We will not put up with a series of countries that not only erect fences on their borders but at the same time do not accept to put up a single refugee."

Athens was enraged when Austria held a meeting of Balkan countries Wednesday on the refugee crisis, excluding Greece. It recalled its ambassador in Vienna the next day. Greece's minister responsible for migration, Ioannis Mouzalas, had harsh words as he arrived for a Thursday migration meeting in Brussels.

"(Many here) will try to discuss how to respond to a humanitarian crisis in Greece that they themselves are intent on creating," Mouzalas said. "Greece will not accept unilateral actions. Greece, too, can take unilateral action."

Peter Szijjarto, Hungary's minister of foreign affairs and trade, didn't mince his words in response. "Blackmailing is not a European attitude," he said. "Maybe Greece, too, should observe our common rules, or at least accept help to observe them together. Then we do not have to face such challenges."

While the politicians wrangle, the refugees still stream in, risking their lives across the winter seas in the hopes of a better future. "If the border closes over there, there will be possibilities, but it may cost a lot of money, not only for me, for everybody," said Jamshid Azizi, a 24-year-old Afghan who once worked as an interpreter for international forces in his homeland.

Many of his friends were already talking to smugglers, but not him. "I prefer to stay here, because I don't have that amount of money to pay for human traffickers in order to pass the borders," he said.

Raphael Kominis and Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Costas Kantouris in Idomeni and Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, Macedonia, contributed.

France begins slow dismantling of giant Calais migrant camp

February 29, 2016

PARIS (AP) — French authorities began dismantling the sprawling refugee camp in Calais on Monday, taking down tarpaulin roofs and plywood walls that have been the temporary home for thousands of migrants hoping to make their way to a better life in Britain.

A flashpoint on the edge of the Channel, the camp sprang up years ago in the port city, which has both ferries and the Eurotunnel rail to Britain. But it has grown explosively in the past year amid Europe's migrant crisis, now housing about 4,000 people and fueling far-right sentiment in both Britain and France.

One by one, helmeted workers pulled down makeshift structures where migrants sleep in the southern sector of the camp, after a court ruled that the shanties could be destroyed but not the common spaces that have also sprung up, like places of worship, schools and a library.

A cordon of police formed a perimeter around the demolition crews, to block what local authorities described as "intimidation" tactics by activists. French authorities have offered to relocate uprooted migrants into heated containers installed last month nearby or at centers around France where they can apply for asylum. Many have resisted the move, fearing it will hurt their chances of reaching Britain, and some migrant advocates say there isn't enough space in the new area.

EU Med countries oppose unilateral actions on refugee crisis

February 26, 2016

LIMASSOL, Cyprus (AP) — The rift over how to handle Europe's immigration crisis ripped wide open Friday. As nations along the Balkans migrant route took more unilateral actions to shut down their borders, diplomats from EU nations bordering the Mediterranean rallied around Greece, the epicenter of the crisis.

Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides — speaking on behalf of colleagues from France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Malta and Greece — said decisions on how to deal with the migrant influx that have already been made by the 28-nation bloc cannot be implemented selectively by some countries.

"This issue is testing our unity and ability to handle it," Kasoulides told a news conference after an EU Mediterranean Group meeting. "The EU Med Group are the front-line states and we all share the view that unilateral actions cannot be a solution to this crisis."

Kasoulides urged EU countries to enact all EU decisions on immigration so there "will be no unfairness to anybody." Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias blasted some European nations for imposing border restrictions on arriving migrants, saying that police chiefs are not allowed to decide to overturn EU decisions.

He said Mediterranean colleagues were "unanimous" in their support for Greece's position on the refugee crisis and that there was "clear criticism to all those who are seeking individual solutions at the expense of other member states."

The Greek government is blaming Austria — a fellow member of Europe's passport-free Schengen Area — for the flare-up in the crisis. Austria imposed strict border restrictions last week, creating a domino effect as those controls were also implemented by Balkan countries further south along the Balkans migration route.

Greece recalled its ambassador to Austria on Thursday and rejected a request to visit Athens by Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner. The United Nations secretary-general expressed "great concern" Friday at the growing number of border restrictions along the migrant trail through Europe.

Ban Ki-moon's spokesman said the U.N. chief is calling on all countries to keep their borders open and says he is "fully aware of the pressures felt by many European countries." The statement noted in particular the new restrictions in Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia.

Thousands of migrants are pouring into Greece every day and officials fear the country could turn into "a giant refugee camp" if they are unable to move north due to borders closures. In Munich, German Chancellor Angela Merkel echoed the Mediterranean EU ministers in calling for a unified European approach to tackle the migrant crisis. Merkel, who has said that those fleeing violence deserve protection, said she was encouraged by the recent deployment of NATO ships to the Aegean Sea alongside vessels from the European Union border agency Frontex.

"NATO has started to work in collaboration with the Turkish coast guard and Frontex. It is too early to see the effects of this measure. All 28 (EU) member states want to stop illegal immigration," she said.

But NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the ships would only be providing a support role. "NATO ships will not do the job of national coastguards in the Aegean. Their mission is not to stop or turn back those trying to cross into Europe," he wrote.

Meanwhile, Greek government officials said Friday that arriving refugees and other migrants will be kept on Aegean Sea islands and on ferries used as floating shelters. Ferry companies were instructed to limit the number of migrants traveling by ferry to the Greek mainland, where thousands have been sleeping outside in city parks and along the country's highways since Greece's existing migrant shelters are filled to capacity.

In Athens, migrants staged peaceful protests, briefly blocking traffic at the country's main port in nearby Piraeus. "All the people around here are looking to get to Germany," Afghan migrant Muchtar Ahman said, speaking at a central Athens square where he was camped out with friends. "But ... (with) the Macedonian borders closed, we are really disappointed. We are hopeless. We are homeless."

Merchant Marine Minister Theodoros Dritsas said up to two-thirds of the migrants arriving on Lesbos and other Greek islands would be held there until Sunday. "We need more time to prepare additional sites for temporary shelters," Dritsas said.

He said three chartered ferries — with a combined capacity of about 4,000 places — would be used on islands to provide temporary shelter over the next three days. About 2,000 people — more than half from Syria and Iraq — are arriving daily from Turkey using dinghies and small boats, but the number of people crossing into neighboring Macedonia has dropped dramatically in the past week, and was down to just 150 on Thursday, according to Greek police figures.

By late Friday, not a single migrant had crossed into Macedonia, while 4,900 people waited nearby in heavy rain, according to Greek police. A Macedonian Interior Ministry official said the reason for the temporary closure is that Serbia, the next country on the Balkan migration corridor that leads to wealthier central European countries, has stopped letting in migrants from Macedonia. The official said Serbia has not admitted any migrants for the past 40 hours.

In Serbia, police said they been formally notified by Croatia and Slovenia that only 580 people per day would be allowed to cross the border. Athens says it is unable to stop migrants from crossing its sea borders without endangering their lives.

Thanassis Stavrakis and Raphael Kominis in Piraeus, Greece; Nicholas Paphitis in Athens, Greece; Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, Greece; Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, Macedonia; and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report.

In Sweden's 1st unmanned food store, all you need is a phone

February 29, 2016

VIKEN, Sweden (AP) — It was a chaotic, late-night scramble to buy baby food with a screaming toddler in the backseat that gave Robert Ilijason the idea to open Sweden's first unmanned convenience store.

Home alone with his hungry son, Ilijason had dropped the last baby food jar on the floor, and had to drive 20 minutes from the small town of Viken in southern Sweden to find a supermarket that was open.

Now the 39-year-old IT specialist runs a 24-hour shop with no cashier. Customers simply use their cellphones to unlock the door with a swipe of the finger and scan their purchases. All they need to do is to register for the service and download an app. They get charged for their purchases in a monthly invoice.

The shop has basics like milk, bread, sugar, canned food, diapers and other products that you expect to find in a small convenience store. It doesn't have tobacco or medical drugs because of the risk of theft. Alcohol cannot be sold in convenience stores in Sweden.

"My ambition is to spread this idea to other villages and small towns," said Ilijason. "It is incredible that no one has thought of his before." He hopes the savings of having no staff will help bring back small stores to the countryside. In recent decades, such stores have been replaced by bigger supermarkets often many miles (kilometers) away.

Ilijason receives deliveries at the shop and stacks products on the shelves. Then he lets the customers do the rest. He has installed six surveillance cameras to discourage shoplifting in the 480-square-foot (45-square-meter) store. Also, he is alerted by a text message if the front door stays open for longer than eight seconds or if someone tries to break it open.

"I live nearby and can always run down here with a crowbar," Ilijason said laughing, but added that hasn't been necessary since the store opened in January. A bigger challenge has been getting some of the elderly residents in Viken, a town of 4,200 people, to get the hang of the technology involved.

Tuve Nilsson, 75, said there were many more shops in the town when he moved here with his family in 1976. He welcomed Ilijason's new store, saying it could be convenient for elderly people living alone.

"But if they can manage this (technology), I don't know," Nilsson said. "Sometimes I don't understand it." Ilijason is considering other ways to unlock the door that wouldn't require using an app. He's ruled out face-recognition or fingerprint scanners, but is thinking of installing a credit card reader like some banks use. He's also considering having one person man the store for a few hours a day to help customers who aren't comfortable with modern technology.

Other customers loved the speed of the no-service store. Raymond Arvidsson, a friend of Ilijason's, did his shopping in less than a minute. "No queues," he said, smiling. "Quick in, quick out. I like."

Associated Press videojournalist David Keyton contributed to this report.