Ibrahim Rugova
President of Kosovo
(BBC, CNN, The Economist, Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the British Government) |
Ibrahim Rugova became Kosovo's first president on 4 March 2002, following his party's victory in the general elections on 17 November 2001.
He was born in Kosovo in 1944. Rugova went to the Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied linguistics. Upon his return to Kosovo he became a professor of Albanian literature and a writer. In 1989 he headed the Kosovo writers' union.
Later that year, then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic revoked the province's autonomy in 1989, which led to the establishment of the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), the first non-communist party in Kosovo.
Rugova led the LDK through the 1990s following a policy of non-violent resistance to the Milosevic regime. The LDK boycotted Serbian and federal elections and helped create a parallel administration of hospitals, schools and taxation for the ethnic Albanian population. In 1992 and in 1998 Rugova was elected president of the self-styled "Republic of Kosovo", which was not recognised by Belgrade.
Rugova's pacifist policy came under criticism in the mid-1990s when Kosovo was excluded from the Dayton peace accords - a sign many ethnic Albanians read as indicating the province had little chance of winning western support for its independence aspirations.
Rugova participated in the Rambouillet peace talks in February 1999 as a member of the Kosovo Albanian delegation.
His party regained support to win municipal elections in Kosovo in October 2000 with 58 per cent of the vote. In general elections in November 2001, the LDK won 46 per cent of the vote, which gave it the win but not a majority. After three months of debate on a power-sharing agreement with the other ethnic Albanian parties, Rugova was named president of Kosovo in March 2002.