Former President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi turns 53 today. Unlike previous years when he was celebrating with his family, this birthday finds Thaçi in The Hague where he is being charged by the Special Court. Hashim Thaçi, born on April 24, 1968, is the fifth president of the Republic of Kosovo. After the victory of the Democratic Party of Kosovo in the parliamentary elections of November 17, 2007, Hashim Thaçi was elected Prime Minister of the Government of Kosovo, on January 9, 2008. On February 17, 2008, Prime Minister Hashim Thaçi declared Kosovo an independent, sovereign and democratic state in the Assembly of Kosovo. Hashim Thaçi is the first Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of Kosovo. During the negotiation process (2005-2007), led by the UN Special Envoy, President Martti Ahtisaari, Hashim Thaçi was a member of the Unity Team. The Ahtisaari document resulted in a comprehensive proposal for Kosovo's independence. During the International Conference on Kosovo, held in Rambouillet, France (February 6 - 22, 1999), Hashim Thaçi was the head of the Kosovo delegation. The conference ended in Paris on March 18, 1999, where after the signing of the Albanian side, the way was opened for NATO military intervention in Kosovo. Hashim Thaçi is one of the founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army. During the war years, he was the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army. From March 1999 to January 2000, Hashim Thaçi was the Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Kosovo (Government of Unity). In political life he initially engaged in the People's Movement for the Republic of Kosovo in the years 1989-1993, (LPK). He was the leader of the Student Movement in the years 1990-1993. In 1991, Hashim Thaçi was elected student vice-rector of the University of Prishtina. After students and teachers were forcibly expelled from university facilities, he worked to establish and structure university education. At the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Prishtina, in 1993, Hashim Thaçi successfully completed his studies in the Department of History. Following the establishment of the KLA, Serbian police failed to arrest him in 1993. A Serbian court in Pristina in 1997, in absentia, sentenced Hashim Thaci and a group of KLA members, led by Adem Jashari, to many years in prison. At the University of Zurich in Switzerland (1996), he pursued postgraduate studies in the field of History of Southeast Europe and political science, until the beginning of 1998. During his stay in the west, Hashim Thaçi often returned to Kosovo illegally to strengthen KLA formations on the ground. After the war, as Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi led the negotiations with the international community and is a signatory of the agreement for the transformation of the KLA into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). With the commencement of the work of the Interim Administrative Council (KPA), as a joint governing structure with the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), he was a member of this council from January 2000, until the first parliamentary elections in 2001. In October 1999 he founded the Party of Democratic Progress of Kosovo (PPDK), while in the First Electoral Assembly (2000), Hashim Thaçi was elected chairman of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK). Hashim Thaçi was re-elected chairman of the PDK in the second Assembly (2002) and the third election (2005). He has been elected an MP in three legislatures of the Assembly of Kosovo. Since 1999, Hashim Thaçi has affirmed and defended the issue of Kosovo with many lectures and speeches in dozens of prestigious universities and institutes in Western countries. He has published numerous articles in the local, regional and international press. He speaks English and German. He was born on April 24, 1968 in Buroja, Skenderaj.