Kosovo starts issuing own passports

Ethnic Albanian Teuta Begolli poses for the media with a Kosovo passport July 30, 2008. Begolli is the first Kosovo citizen to receive the passport, five months after Kosovo seceded from Serbia.

PRISTINA (Reuters) - Kosovo issued its first passports on Wednesday, five months after its secession from Serbia won recognition from some 43 countries.

Tens of thousands of citizens have applied since last week for the dark blue passport, with "Republic of Kosovo" written on the cover in Albanian, the language of the 90 percent majority, as well as Serbian and English.

The government has no information on whether countries that have not recognized Kosovo's independence will accept the new passport.

"I will only visit countries that accept my passport," said student Teuta Begolli, who won a prize draw to receive the first Kosovo passport from Prime Minister Hashim Thaci. "I will not travel to other countries until they recognize us."

Serbia lost control of Kosovo in June 1999 when NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the mass killing of Albanians in a two-year counter-insurgency war.

Most of Kosovo's two million citizens have since used travel documents issued by the United Nations administration in Kosovo.

But the 120,000-strong ethnic Serb minority and many practically minded Kosovo Albanians still kept their old Serbian passports, which are recognised everywhere.

"We are a nation that easily finds other solutions, we don't have only one passport," said Nol Pashoja, who also holds a Macedonian passport.

The Serb minority, which rejects the secession, has the right to hold dual Kosovo-Serbian citizenship.

(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, editing by Ellie Tzortzi and Tim Pearce)