Albanian leader gets Sakharov prize

BRUSSELS, OCT 24: The European Parliament has decided to award this year's Sakharov prize to Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the ethnic Albania...

BRUSSELS, OCT 24: The European Parliament has decided to award this year’s Sakharov prize to Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the ethnic Albanians in the Serbian separatist province of Kosovo.

Parliament president Jose Maria Gil-Robles and leaders of the political groups in the 626-member assembly voted on Thursday in favour of Rugova, who advocates a peaceful struggle for the independence of Kosovo.

Rugova will be invited to receive the award at a December ceremony in parliament headquarters in Strasbourg, France.

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Other nominees were the Turkish human rights campaigner Akin Birdal and Ukshin Hoti, an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo who is currently under arrest.

Earlier this month Birdal, the head of Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation, was seen as the most likely contender for the prize after the parliament’s foreign affairs committee gave him 22 votes, against 16 to Rugova and six to Hoti.

“Our party voted for Rugova, because we felt this was the right thing to do in view of the current political situation inKosovo,” Helmut Weixler, a spokesman for the parliament’s Greens said.