Kosovo PM 'aware of organ trade'

(PRISTINA) - Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci was not personally involved in organ trafficking but he is aware of the affair, a Council of Europe envoy said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

Dick Marty, whose report on alleged human organ trade in the aftermath of the 1998-99 Kosovo war had also linked Thaci with organised crime, said he did "not say in any case that Thaci was implicated in organ trafficking".

"People very close to Thaci were implicated, so it is very difficult to imagine that he has never heard about" it, Marty said in the interview with Radio Television of Kosovo (RTK).

"By no means I can imagine Thaci participating personally in taking out the organs," Marty said.

Marty's report said Thaci had headed an ethnic Albanian rebel Kosovo Liberation Army faction which controlled secret detention centres in Albania where the human organ trafficking was alleged to have taken place during and after the war between the guerrillas and Serbian forces.

It also alleged that Thaci was a leading organised crime boss, citing other reports about his suspected involvement in drugs trade.

"The report shows a troublesome closeness of certain political circles with organised crime," Marty said in the interview, the first to Albanian-language media since the report was published in mid-December.

Those mentioned in the report "are from Thaci's circle", Marty said.

He added that the findings were the results of a thorough investigation that had included talks with "very confidential witnesses who could give us the details which figure in the report".

"You can not pretend that nothing has happened," Marty said.

Thaci, who was one of the KLA's most prominent leaders, has hit back in several interviews denying the allegations and vowing to sue Marty for libel.

He even slammed the report as "racist" and described it as "Goebbels-style propaganda", a reference to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.

In a letter to the Council of Europe, Thaci said Tuesday his government would "fully cooperate" in an investigation related to Marty's report and called on the probe to "begin immediatelly".

"The government of Kosovo is certain that a full, independent and transparent investigation will prove that there are no bases for such charges," Thaci said in a letter quoted by RTK.

Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and despite Serbia's fierce opposition has been recognised by 72 countries, including the United States and all but five of the 27 EU memebrs.