On Thursday, November 5, Veton Surroi will deliver a lecture entitled “Kosovo from NATO’s
Intervention to Independence: An Appraisal” as part of the Center for European Studies-European Union Center’s Conversations on Europe series. Surroi will give an overview of Kosovo’s path to independence that started long before the breakup of Yugoslavia, but entered its final stage with NATO’s intervention in 1999. As a prominent pro-democracy and civil society leader, one of the signatories of the Rambouillet Accords, and a member of the Unity Team for Kosovo, Veton Surroi offers a unique perspective on the aspirations and obstacles of a young country in the process of state-building.

Veton Surroi, a journalist and politician, is currently publicist and publisher for the KOHA Media Group in Prishtina, Kosovo. He is also the Chair of the Board of the Foreign Policy Club, an NGO in Kosovo that deals with international policy. In 1999 he participated in the Rambouillet peace talks of 1999, and was one of the signatories of the Rambouillet Accords. It was the rejection of this NATO-drafted document by the Yugoslav government that led to U.S. and European intervention in Kosovo. In his capacity as head of the ORA party and MP from October 2005 to December 2007, he was a member of the Unity Team of Kosovo, which negotiated the independence of the country. He is the recipient of the International Federation of Journalists Annual Award for Journalism (2000). In 2000, together with Serbian human rights activist Nataša Kandic, he received Holland’s Geuzen Award for Freedom and the National Endowment for Democracy’s Award for Democracy.

SPONSORS: Veton Surroi’s visit to the University of Michigan is sponsored by the Center for European Studies-European Union Center, Center for Russian and East European Studies, and Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. The public lecture is part of the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia’s fall series, “The Nines: Brinks, Cusps, and Perceptions of Possibility—from 1789-2009,” which brings experts and scholars to the University of Michigan to reflect on the revolutionary events that occurred at the ends of decades?in this case 1989 and 1999.

PLACE: 1636 International Institute/School of Social Work, 1080 South University Ave., Ann Arbor.