Vetevendosje MPs repeatedly detonated tear gas in the chamber to stop parliamentary sessions, from October 2015 until January this year.
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Opposition lawmakers in Kosovo have launched tear gas to disrupt the work of a parliamentary commission on a border demarcation agreement with neighboring Montenegro.
The draft of the demarcation deal was approved Tuesday by the commission with support only from the governing majority members.
There have been violent protests in Kosovo for the last 10 months against reforms including this proposal, which the opposition says is illegal and would lose Kosovo 8,000 hectares of territory. Parliament will vote on the proposed pact later in the week. The opposition has threatened to stop the vote by all means.
Local media reported on Wednesday that a meeting where a vote on the disputed demarcation deal was to be scheduled had to be suspended when an opposition lawmaker opened a tear gas canister.
The opposition Self-Determination Movement Party confirmed that one of its members, Driton Caushi, was detained by police after he left the parliament building.
A hand grenade was later thrown at the house of the head of the government commission that drew up the border deal with Montenegro, police said.
Washington and the European Union, who were the biggest supporters of Kosovo’s independence, deny Kosovo would lose land as the opposition claims and say the deal with Montenegro is in line with worldwide and local law.
“I can guarantee that Kosovo is not losing a single centimeter of its land”, Prime Minister Isa Mustafa told a news conference. Tensions have been exacerbated by an earlier EU-brokered accord with its northern neighbour Serbia giving more autonomy to Serb-dominated municipalities in the small state of 1.8 million.
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Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 but Serbia and several other countries, including Spain and Russian Federation, have failed to recognise it. Kosovo’s independence is now recognized by more than 110 countries, although not by Serbia.
