Serbs protest Kosovo shootings

KiM Info Newsletter 27-12-05

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia-Montenegro, Dec 27 (AFP)

Some 1,000 Serbs took to the streets of Mitrovica on Tuesday, voicing their anger after two Serbs were shot and wounded in the ethnically divided town in Kosovo.

"The latest attacks show that ethnic cleansing is happening," shouted protesters at the demonstration in the centre of the mainly Serb-populated northern part of the town.

"If UNMIK (the UN mission in Kosovo) cannot guarantee our security, there is only solution left -- the return of Serbian military and police" to the province of Kosovo, they said.

The gathering was held in response to the shooting of two ethnic Serbs in Mitrovica early Monday. Both victims were taken to hospital, and one of them is recovering from an operation on gunshot wounds to his stomach.

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and NATO since June 1999, when the alliance's intervention ended a crackdown by Belgrade-controlled forces against separatist ethnic Albanian rebels.

More than 200,000 ethnic Serbs have since fled the province fearing reprisals from Albanians after the 1998-1999 conflict, according to Serbia's government.
Out of the estimated 80,000 Serbs who remain in Kosovo, some 30,000 live in enclaves in the central part of the province, as ethnic tensions remain high.

Albanians, who outnumber Serbs and other minorities in Kosovo by more than nine to one, are seeking independence from Serbia in the recently opened talks on the province's future status.

Kosovo key issue in 2006: Italian FM

RELIEF WEB (SWITZERLAND)

 

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Date: 27 Dec 2005

 

BELGRADE, Dec 27 (AFP) - The future status of UN-administered Kosovo province will be the key issue in international political discussions next year, Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said here Tuesday.

 

"The issue of Kosovo will be the key one in 2006... Everything should be done to solve this problem peacefully by political means," Fini said after a series of talks with top Serbian officials in Belgrade.

 

In November, the UN's special Kosovo envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, began a mission to resolve the status of the province, which legally remains a part of Serbia. First direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina, the Kosovo capital, were expected in late January.

 

"The solution for the province should be reached through negotiations, with a European character," Fini said, adding that Italy would propose an "active political role for the European Union in the talks."

 

Kosovo became a UN protectorate in 1999 after NATO bombing ended a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists who took up arms against the regime of the then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to demand independence.

 

"It will not be like before 1999 and there should be no division of Kosovo," said Fini.

 

Fini will travel to Kosovo on Wednesday to visit Italian troops, part of the NATO-led peacekeeping force (KFOR) stationed in the province.

Terrorists said to be getting aid in Balkans

HOUSTON CHRONICLE (USA), Dec. 27, 2005, 2:35AM

 

Crime gangs that control the smuggling routes are making their infiltration easier

 

By GREGORY KATZ Houston Chronicle Foreign Service

 

BELGRADE, SERBIA - A hidden alliance between terror networks and organized crime gangs that control heavily used smuggling routes in the Balkans is making it easier for terrorists to infiltrate Western Europe, according to law enforcement officials and intelligence experts.

 

In addition, prosecutors in Serbia believe that in some cases the money earned by people traffickers is used to support terrorist activities in Europe, which has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in the last two years, with many others prevented by police raids.

 

A key problem is lax border controls throughout the region. Many borders, such as the one between Romania and Serbia, are wide open to gangs that smuggle people, heroin and goods.

 

Europe's battle to contain the spread of international terrorism has been hobbled by such porous borders, which each year allow tens of thousands of undocumented immigrants to enter. So many people are sneaking into Europe that authorities admit they do not know exactly who resides in their countries, complicating the effort to prevent more terrorist attacks.

 

"This is a paradise for al-Qaida," said Marko Nicovic, former police chief in the Serbian capital Belgrade and a director of the International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association. "For Europe, it can be a disaster at any time because the authorities don't know who is there and they don't know who is who. The attacks in Madrid and London showed that."

 

Traveling freely

 

Once illegal migrants reach Serbia overland from Eastern Europe, police say they can easily cross into Bosnia and then Slovenia, thus entering the European Union. At that point, they can take advantage of weak or nonexistent border controls to travel freely to France, Spain, Germany and other countries on the continent.

 

Police officials believe that most of the migrants are law-abiding people looking for work, but they caution that the migration gives terrorist gangs a way to move sleeper cells into the West while also fueling tensions between Western Europe's Muslims, the fastest growing minority on the continent, and the rest of society.

 

These tensions surface in a number of ways: the deadly attacks on transit systems in Madrid and London, intense rioting in France, death threats against secular politicians in the Netherlands, and legal battles over the right to wear Muslim scarves and headgear to public schools.

 

While smuggling gangs are using Serbia as a transit point, some Muslim militants seems to have established a base in neighboring Bosnia.

 

Officials warn that several hundred militants who came to Bosnia to fight on behalf of Muslims there during the war in the 1990s have remained in the country to attack the West.

 

In October, police in Bosnia uncovered an apparent plot to blow up the British Embassy and found a large cache of weapons and explosives along with propaganda vowing to retaliate for the U.S.-and-British-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

 

A Swede and a Dane were also arrested in that raid, and there were follow-up arrests in Sweden that suggested the Bosnian extremists had operational ties to Western Europe, investigators said.

 

Disturbing pairing

 

Magnus Ranstorp, a specialist at the Swedish National Defense College who testified before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, said the presence of Islamic militants inside Bosnia makes it an attractive gateway into Europe for terrorists.

 

"They came in ten years ago, that was the first warning signal, it was the embryo of what became al-Qaida in Europe," he said. "The Iranians are supporting activity there, and the Balkans have become the crossroads where we see the merger of Islamic extremist groups who reach out to organized crime groups."

 

Ranstorp said well-established organized crime networks in the region provide the terrorist gangs with routes for people smuggling and with phony identification documents.

 

"People being smuggled in add to the security threat," he said. "Most are economic migrants but hand-in-hand with that are people in organized crime who allow terrorism to be possible. They move in the same circles and need the same things. If you want to tackle terrorists, you have to tackle the supporting environment, the organized crime rings and the human trafficking rings."

 

The migrants enter Europe in many ways. Some travel on land through Serbia and the other countries of the former Yugoslavia.

 

Others take trawlers or dilapidated fishing boats across the Mediterranean bound for southern Spain or Italy. Still others simply fly into the continent's many hub airports.

 

'New generation of jihadis'

 

A large number of immigrants formally apply for political asylum in their new countries, giving them the right to a legal review that can take years. Others destroy their identity documents, making it difficult for authorities to determine their nationality.

 

Many come from predominantly Muslim countries like Morocco, Pakistan and Afghanistan where jihadis committed to waging holy war against the West are active. This sentiment has grown in ferocity since the United States and Britain invaded Iraq two years ago, according to analysts and enforcement agents.

 

"There is clear, unmistakable evidence that the level of terrorist activity that has killed and injured people has soared to unprecedented levels since we invaded Iraq," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and State Department counter-terrorism specialist now working in the private sector.

 

"Iraq is creating a new generation of jihadis looking for places to live in Europe," Johnson said, "and they have this festering resentment that is usually at the core of terrorism. They will take up residence with existing communities or form new ones in Europe.

 

"It doesn't augur for a great future."

 

Serbian investigators maintain they have uncovered a prime example of the cozy relationship between terrorism and people smugglers. It involves a Bangladeshi suspect believed by prosecutors to be making more than $150,000 per week bringing people into Western Europe through clandestine routes.

 

Training camps in Bosnia

 

Mioljub Vitorovic, the Serbian special prosecutor for organized crime cases, said he believes, but cannot prove, that some of this money was being paid to support the families of suicide bombers who have carried out attacks in Europe. He also believes a number of jihadis from Bangladesh have gathered at training camps inside Bosnia.

 

The prosecutor complained that the suspect, whom he declined to name, appears to have some high-level protection because he has been able to flee whenever police are closing in.

 

Prosecutors in several countries are gathering evidence about the gang, he said.

 

"This is a huge case involving Sri Lankans, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and the whole region is looking for the leader of the operation, who is this Bangladeshi," Vitorovic said. "He was involved during the Bosnian war and he's using his connections to bring people across the borders. We have information about the money he is making. This is from listening to his mobile phone conversations."

 

He said he had warned intelligence officials in Western Europe about the threat posed by this people-smuggling operation but was ignored.

 

That changed, he said, after the July 7 suicide attacks on London's transit system, carried out by British Muslims linked to overseas groups, revealed how dangerous the situation had become.

 

"Now they are paying much more attention to the situation here," he said.

 

'Using all channels'

 

Serbian Border Police concede they are outmanned and outgunned in the losing battle against well-organized smugglers.

 

"It's very easy for them to cross the Danube," said Col. Dusan Zlokas, chief of the Serbian Border Police. "We need more boats, we need radar, we need thermal imaging, we need binoculars with night vision, we need everything. We don't have the technical capacity to provide border security."

 

He cited the arrest in Serbia in March of a Moroccan accused of taking part in the deadly 2004 attacks on the Madrid train system that killed nearly 200 people as proof that international terrorists are using Serbia as a transit point.

 

"The biggest number of recruited terrorists is coming from this illegal immigrants community," he said. "It is a very vulnerable society and easy to recruit in. For sure, this jeopardizes Western Europe and the U.S.

 

"This is the crossroads of the trade in illegal immigrants, weapons and drugs and no one can say terrorists cannot pass. They are using all channels."

First phase of reconstruction process successfully completed

KiM Info Newsletter 25-12-05 www.kosovo.com

Reconstruction Implementation Commission for Orthodox Religious Sites in
Kosovo

PRESS RELEASE

21 December 2005

The Reconstruction Implementation Commission (RIC) announces the completion
of the works of protection and consolidation carried out in 30 Orthodox
religious sites damaged in March 2004. The RIC considers that it has fully
achieved its goal of protecting the sites against further deterioration
before the arrival of winter.

The RIC began work in June 2005 as a result of an agreement between the
Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) and the Provisional Institutions of Self
Government (PISG) to repair Orthodox sites damaged in March 2004. The PISG
has funded interventions at all sites except the Church of St Nicholas in
Prizren, which was supported by a generous donation from the US office.

Temporary roof over the burned church of St. Nicholas in Pristina

Between June and September 2005, the RIC prepared and tendered emergency
interventions for 30 sites, which began implementation in October 2005. More
extensive works of reconstruction and preservation will proceed in 2006. As
part of a long-term conservation programme, the RIC organized an expert
mission to survey wall paintings within the damaged sites.

The RIC is headed by an international expert, Ms. Emma Carmichael, appointed
by the Council of Europe (CoE) and includes representatives from the
Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports (MCYS), the SOC and the Institutions
for the Protection of Monuments of Kosovo and Belgrade.

International partners, the CoE, UNMIK and the European Commission, have
expressed their satisfaction not only with the concrete work of the RIC, but
also with the outstanding collaboration demonstrated by PISG in Kosovo, SOC,
Institutions in Serbia as well as by the Albanian, Serbian and international
professionals and institutions who have made this work possible. The RIC has
proven to be the most effective mechanism of cooperation between the various
stakeholders in the field of cultural heritage in Kosovo and all local and
international partners have fully committed to continuing the works in 2006.

SUMMARY OF INTERVENTIONS CARRIED OUT DURING 2005

. Protective fences were placed in the churches of St. Petka in Donja
Sipasnica, Presentation of the Virgin and St. Florus and Laurus in Lipljian.

. Protection measures and consolidation of remains in the sites of the
destroyed churches of St. Elias in Bistazin, Assumption of the Holy Virgin
in Djakovica and the cemetery chapel of St. Lazar in Piskote, where a large
number of graves were also repaired.

. Further extensive protection measures, including provisional coverings,
were also made in the churches of St. Nicholas in Pristina, Cathedral of St.
George in Prizren and St. Elias in Vucitrn. Extensive interventions in these
churches is programmed for 2006.

. Minor repairs in the churches of St. Petka in Vitina, St. Michael in
Obilic, St. Nicholas in Kosovo Polje, Holy King Uros in Urosevac and St.
Michael in Stimlje have been completed.

. Major consolidation and stabilization works have been carried out in the
churches of the Holy Virgin Ljeviska, St Nicholas (Tutic's), St George
(Runovic's), St. Saviour and St. Kyriake in Prizren, St. Joanikije at Devic,
Presentation of the Holy Virgin in Belo Polje, St. Sava in Mitrovica and St.
Andrew in Podujevo. Internal and external repairs will be continued during
next year.

. Churches and cemeteries repaired in the sites of St. Peter and Paul in
Talinovac, St. Elias in Varosh Selo and Serbian town Cemetery and Chapel in
Urosevac.

. Complete reconstruction works were done in the churches of the Birth of
the Holy Virgin in Softovic, St. Peter and Paul in Istog, St. John the
Baptist in Pec and the refectory of the church of St. Kyriake in Brnjaca.

Attacks leave two injured in Kosovo

FoNet and Beta News Agencies, Belgrade, December 26, 2005 09:23 -> 12:30

 

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Monday - Dejan Maksimovic and Branislav Antovic where injured in two armed attacks in Kosovska Mitrovica late last night.

 

An unidentified shooter fired through the window the Maksimovic family home and wounded Dejan Maksimovic's leg. The attacker fled from the scene and no one else was injured.

 

In the second incident, Branislav Antovic was shot several times while working the overnight security shift at the Vodovod Ibar public parking grounds, and was taken to the Kosovska Mitrovica Hospital where doctors operated on him last night. Maksimovic is receiving treatment at the hospital as well.

 

"Antovic was shot twice in the stomach, several of his internal organs were damaged and he was bleeding heavily. A four hour operation was done and he is currently is stable but critical condition. Dejan Maksimovic was shot in the shin. The injuries are serious, but he is stable." Milan Ivanovic, deputy director of the Kosovska Mitrovica Hospital, said.

 

Maksimovic told Beta that the attacker shot at him from the terrace of his own apartment. He said that he was watching television in the room in which his parents were sleeping.

 

"I heard steps and sounds coming from the terrace and went out to see what it was. I saw a silhouette of a person holding something in their hands. I could not see anything in the dark. I then went back towards the room and heard the shots." Maksimovic said.

 

The police have yet to give a statement regarding the attacks and investigations are ongoing.

 

Violence "will not be tolerated"

 

US Office Chief in Pristina, Philip Goldberg, said that disorder or violence in any form will not be tolerated in Kosovo.

 

"We are clear in the principles which the Contact Group has introduced when Kosovo is in question, and NATO, along with the international and Kosovo police forces, will do everything to prevent any eventual violence in Kosovo." Goldberg said, adding that "Absolute security cannot be guaranteed in the US, much less in Kosovo."

 

A message to the Serbs

 

Goran Bogdanovic, member of Belgrade's Kosovo status discussion team, has condemned the attacks and said that they represent a message that Serbs are not wanted in this Kosovo city.

 

"I am not going to prejudge who could be responsible for the attacks while the police and institutions have yet to make any official statements, but there are many indications as to where the attacks could be coming from. We know who has pointed fingers at Kosovska Mitrovica thus far. We know who has, on several occasions, tried to cross into northern Kosovska Mitrovica from the southern region, and last night's attack is just another attempt to try and destabilize the only larger city in Kosovo where there are still Serbs living and has remained multi-ethnic." Bogdanovic said, keeping his statement ambiguous.

 

He said that last night's attacks, other more recent attacks on Serbs in Strpac, the turning off of electricity going to Serbian villages in Kosovo, all have one goal in mind; to demoralize the Serbian community and get them thinking about leaving, coincidentally, at the same time that discussions for the future status of Kosovo are set to begin.

Two Serbs wounded in attacks in northern Kosovo

Associated Press, Dec 26, 2005 4:46 AM

 

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Serbia-Montenegro-Two ethnic Serbs were wounded early Monday in separate attacks in U.N.-run Kosovo, police officials and doctors said.

 

The incidents happened around 0100 GMT in the Serb-held part of Kosovska Mitrovica, an ethnically divided town in the north of the province.

 

Police said that one person was seriously injured and the other lightly. Spokesman Sami Mehmeti gave no other details, but said there was no immediate indication that the attacks were ethnically motivated.

 

According to Serb sources in Kosovska Mitrovica, unknown assailants first shot at 35-year-old Branislav Antovic, a guard for the local authorities.

 

Local doctor Milan Ivanovic said Antovic was in life-threatening condition following four hours of surgery.

 

Dejan Maksimovic, 24, was shot in the leg while at his home in the ethnically mixed Bosnjacka Mahala part of town. Maksimovic told Belgrade-based Beta news agency that the attacker climbed to his balcony and fired at him.

 

Ivanovic said Maksimovic also underwent surgery but was in stable condition.

 

Kosovo remains tense years after a Serb-Albanian war over the region. There are fears that tensions could soar in the run-up to U.N.-brokered talks next year on the province's future status.

Coordinating Center president visits monasteries in Metohija

KiM Info Newsletter 24-12-05

KIM Info Service, Decani, December 23, 2005

As part of her tour of Kosovo and Metohija, Dr. Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, the president of the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija, visited several Serbian Orthodox monasteries in Metohija yesterday and today, including Devic, the Pec Patriarchate, Gorioc and Visoki Decani. During her discussions with the monks and nuns of those monasteries, Ms. Raskovic-Ivic learned first-hand of the difficulties confronting these monastic communities, which have lived in almost complete isolation for the past six years under the constant military protection of KFOR, and promised them help and support.

In Visoki Decani Monastery Ms. Raskovic-Ivic held an extended discussion with Vicar Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan, the head of the monastery and the vice-chair of the Council for Kosovo and Metohija of the Serbian Orthodox Church, and Protosingel Sava, sharing her views with regard to the future protection of Serbian Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo and Metohija. Bishop Teodosije emphasized that the Church is vitally interested in the protection of her faithful and holy shrines in Kosovo and Metohija, and that the Serbian Orthodox monasteries in this region are not only valuable historical and cultural monuments of global significance but also living monastic communities that need long-term, internationally guaranteed protection. He noted that he was extremely pleased that a task group for the protection of spiritual and cultural heritage has been formed within the Serbian negotiating team, adding that it is essential to work together on discovering optimal solutions in the spirit of the agreement achieved at a joint session of the negotiating team and the Council for Kosovo on December 6.

Ms. Raskovic-Ivic emphasized that in addition to the issue of decentralization in upcoming talks about the Province special attention will be dedicated to defining the best ways of protecting the Serbian cultural heritage in Kosovo and Metohija, adding that expert cooperation with representatives of the Church is very important and necessary. She also expressed interest in the restoration process being implemented by a commission under the supervision of a Council of Europe, in which Bishop Teodosije represents the Serbian Orthodox Church. He informed Ms. Raskovic-Ivic of what had been accomplished thus far as well as of plans for the next year.

After a tour of the new monastery kitchen presently being built with funds provided by the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija and the new dairy barn, Ms. Raskovic-Ivic and her associates continued on to Prizren and Gracanica.

Aleksandra Fulgosi, Nenad Trajkovic, Dragan Lukic and Zoran Mujbegovic, Ms. Raskovic-Ivic's associates, accompanied her on her visit to Serbian monasteries.

-----

Italian chief of staff admiral di Paola visits Visoki Decani Monastery

KIM Info Service, Decani, December 23, 2005

Following the visit of the delegation of the Coordinating Center for Kosovo and Metohija, a senior delegation of the Italian Army visited Visoki Decani Monastery. The delegation was headed by Italian chief of staff admiral Giampaolo di Paloa and general Castagnetti. The Italian military officials were also accompanied by KFOR commander in chief general Giuseppe Valotto and his local commanding officers.

The Italian senior officers expressed their personal admiration for the beauty of the monastery, emphasizing its importance for the cultural heritage of Europe and the world. Admiral di Paola strongly emphasized that KFOR military forces will continue to protect religious sites in Kosovo and Metohija as long as necessary, expressing the hope that in the meanwhile the spirit of tolerance and respect toward Christian cultural monuments would be established.

Admiral di Paola stressed that the protection of monasteries in Kosovo is an important priority for the Italian army, which currently has been entrusted with command of three world peacekeeping missions: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

Wishing his senior guests a happy Christmas and new year's holiday, Bishop Teodosije once again took the opportunity to thank the Italian Army for the dedication of its soldiers in protecting the Serbian cultural heritage in Metohija.

Next week Italian foreign minister Fini is expected to visit Visoki Decani Monastery with his associates as part of his visit to KFOR troops in Kosovo and Metohija.

-----

Kosovo Ombudsperson: Minorities who fled Kosovo in 1999 are being denied access to proceeds from KTA Privatization

Ombudsperson's office, Pristina

PRISTINA, Kosovo, Dec 23 —Before getting on a plane to leave Kosovo today, Kosovo Ombudsperson, Mr. Marek Antoni Nowicki, wrote one last letter to UN head, SRSG Soren Jessen-Petersen, urging him to address complaints from former employees of Kosovo’s “socially-owned enterprises” (SOE’s) who say they are too frequently unable to profit from the on-going privatization process.

These mainly Serbian complainants contend they were obliged to leave Kosovo or were dismissed from their jobs after 1999, and were unable to be employed when the Kosovo Trust Agency initiated privatization proceedings (May 2003).

Without proving that they were employed (by the SOE’s) for a period of three years and without proving that they left their jobs because of discrimination, these workers, who, in some cases, had been SOE employees in the former Yugoslavia for 25 or more years, have been denied proceeds owed to them from the sales of the privatized socially-owned enterprises.

According to an UNMIK Regulation on the privatization process of Kosovo’s socially-owned enterprises, the complainants are allowed to submit their concerns to the Special Chamber of the Supreme Court on Kosovo-Trust Agency-Related Matters, and if they can prove that they would have been employed had they not experienced discrimination, they are then qualified for a list of eligible employees entitled to receive payments in connection with the privatization process.

Although many have lodged complaints with this body, these complainants have had obvious difficulties proving that they suffered from discrimination.

The Kosovo Ombudsperson contends the burden of proof is, however, with the socially-owned businesses to explain why these able workers were not allowed to continue working at their former jobs after 1999 - something that is in line with current basic European Anti-Discrimination standards.

Indeed, even Kosovo’s own Anti-Discrimination Law holds to a similar premise.

Because the international community has so often talked about moving Kosovo towards “European Standards” where rule of law is concerned, the Kosovo Ombudsperson has asked the SRSG, Mr. Jessen-Petersen, to amend the UNMIK regulation on privatization to assure that the privatization law will comply with these European standards.

“Asking former employees to prove discrimination in the context of this privatization process is in flagrant contradiction with generally accepted principles,” the Ombudsperson said, in his last public statement before his departure from Kosovo.

UNMIK Boss Gives Up on Human Rights for Kosovo

ANTIWAR BLOG (USA), Fri Dec 23, 2005

 

Marek Antoni Nowicki, ombudsmen for Kosovo, is notable for being one of the very few international officials to have remained in the UN mission there from the very beginning. But now he's on the way out, reports ADN Kronos.

 

He's also remarkable for being one a very few officials who consistently has stood up for the rights of the people of Kosovo, reminding a disinterested outside world of the chronic problems faced by the province's minorities. And Nowicki has not been afraid to criticize the UN administration for its failings, either.

 

During his tenure, Nowicki was one of the few UNMIK officials to win the respect and trust of all of Kosovo's ethnic communities because he did a rare thing: he listened to their problems. He was impartial. He tried to help the voiceless common people when the state or other groups treated them unfairly. Most fundamentally, he was respected because he was an international, and not from one of the rival ethnic groups.

 

You can read his interview with Balkanalysis.com here.

 

This is why, without being self-aggrandizing, Nowicki wisely noted that "the situation is likely to get worse unless the international community appoints a new human rights watchdog," according to the ADN Kronos report.

 

However, UNMIK boss Soren Jessen-Petersen - an avowed friend of the murderous war criminal Ramush Haradinaj - has decided to replace Nowicki by granting "human rights supervision to local ethnic Albanian authorities, a move that Novicky considers premature."

 

At the same time Jessen-Petersen, who has "wide arbitrary powers in the province," has decided, contrary to the UN's mandate and Kosovo's legal status, that he will create "Kosovo justice and police ministries, under majority ethnic Albanians' control."

 

Anyone who thinks that granting human rights protection responsibilities to a partisan ethnic group widely feared (for good reason) by another has got to be smoking something very potent indeed.

 

And anyone who thinks that the same people who helped mastermind the March 2004 anti-Serb pograms can be trusted to exercise their duties responsibly and fairly is either deluded or a delighted supporter of full ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

 

To sum up, it is all too clear that the UNMIK is looking to save its own hide from local Albanians who perceive it as an obstacle to independence. By placing the courts, the cops and the human rights observers in the latter's hands, they are paving the way for a fait accompli- the removal of all minorities from Kosovo, which will render moot the idea of a "negotiated solution," leaving Belgrade with nothing to protect save a heritage without a remaining population. And the UNMIK staff is making sure there will be no one left to call them on it, while they can move on to another high-paying job with a similar institutional protection from accountability somewhere else in the world. These people are truly reprehensible.

 

Posted by: Christopher Deliso on Dec 23, 05 | 3:59 am

Kosovo looks set for 'conditional independence'

ISN (SWITZERLAND)  (24/12/05)

 

As both formal and informal behind-the-scenes talks about Kosovo's future status begin, the member countries of the powerful Contact Group seem to have reached a consensus that Kosovo should be granted "conditional independence".

 

By Tim Judah in London and Paris for ISN Security Watch

 

Though UN officials have recently announced that talks concerning the status of Serbia's UN-administered province of Kosovo would begin in earnest in January, ISN Security Watch has learned that much of the real work is already being done behind the scenes, with intense discussions between key countries involved in the region and Serbian and Kosovo Albanian leaders.

 

Over the past few weeks, a series of meetings, both formal and informal, have taken place in key capitals - including the Serbian capital, Belgrade, and the Kosovo capital, Pristina - as diplomats attempt to shape a deal for Kosovo, bolstering the work being done by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who has been chosen to head the UN-led status negotiations.

 

Since the end of the Kosovo war in 1999, the province of some two million people has been under the jurisdiction of the UN, though it legally remains a part of Serbia. Its population is over 90 per cent ethnic Albanian. They have made it clear they want nothing less than full independence for Kosovo.

 

Serbia's official position is that Kosovo can have "more than autonomy but less than independence".

 

Members of the Serbian negotiation team, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic, had proposed earlier this month that Kosovo be divided into Albanian and Serbian areas.

 

According to the Serbian plan, the Albanian areas would be self-governing and independent in all but name, while the Serbian ones would remain linked to Belgrade and the Serbian flag would fly once again on Kosovo's frontiers.

 

In parallel to this, the Serbian leadership has also decided that it would be most advantageous to argue their Kosovo case along legal lines - that is to say that Kosovo is de jure part of Serbia and thus its international frontiers cannot be changed without Serbia's consent.

 

However, Kosovo's Albanian leaders are demanding that the province be given full independence in recognition of their right to self-determination.

 

Over the last few weeks, there have been several meetings - including one between the Contact Group, which was set up to coordinate policy during the Balkan wars in the early 1990s, and Ahtisaari - which have yielded significant results. While Ahtisaari is now the official Kosovo mediator, real power lies with the countries of the Contact Group.

 

There appears to be a considerable unity of purpose among the Contact Group members. France and the US, for example, so often at loggerheads over the past few years, have no major disagreement over Kosovo. Russia, too, has been described by diplomats as extremely cooperative over Kosovo. If Serbian leaders were hoping to find backing from the traditionally friendly Russians there is no evidence thus far that they will get it.

 

Representatives of the Contact Group countries have decided that the best solution for Kosovo is that it be given so called "conditional independence".

 

This means that the sovereign link with Serbia will be broken but that restrictions on Kosovo's independence will remain for a transitional period. These could include, for example, no army and awarding reserve powers to a representative of the international community. The result would be a slimmed down and more focused version of the model that exists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is effectively governed by the international community's High Representative, who has sweeping powers.

 

Diplomats who have talked to ISN Security Watch, on condition of anonymity, say the only disagreement among the Contact Group members is over speed and tactics.

 

"We all know, more or less, where we are going but we just have to be careful of the language used in public," one source said.

 

At the moment, officials from Contact Group countries say publicly that what they want is an agreement made between and mutually acceptable to Serbs and Albanians. Yet, privately, everyone knows that Serbs and Albanians will never be able to agree on the status of Kosovo.

 

France is less willing to openly say that the Contact Group countries are in favor of conditional independence because it fears that to do so might prompt the Serbs to withdraw from talks before they have even properly started.

 

By contrast, the British believe that the sooner the "I" word (for independence) is pronounced, the more flexible the Albanians will become. The British theory, according to informed sources, is that given a guarantee that independence (conditional or otherwise) is coming, the Albanians will be more amenable to granting the Kosovo Serbs concessions such as extensive decentralization.

 

As to whether moving Kosovo towards independence might provoke a nationalist radicalization of Serbia, one source in favor of moving faster rather than slower, simply sums up the Serbian dilemma as one of "Belarus or Brussels". That is to say that Serbia has a choice between renewed isolation or continuing along its current path towards European integration.

 

It is clear to Serbian leaders that US policymakers have little sympathy for the Serbian efforts to keep Kosovo. However, what is unclear is that there appears to be no compelling reason (other than realpolitik,) as to why the US should favor independence for the Kosovo Albanians but oppose it for Iraqi Kurds, for instance.

 

Serbs have looked for support in meetings in Moscow and with the French. The Russians, while promising Serbian leaders that they would oppose anything Belgrade does not agree with, say in private talks with their western counterparts that they will not oppose conditional independence for Kosovo.

 

France then was perhaps the last best hope for the Serbian leadership, but here too, in a series of meetings this month, the Serbs have been disappointed. According to ISN Security Watch sources, the Serbs were told that France would support Serbian interests but that those interests had to be realistic. Holding on to Kosovo, in any form, was not considered realistic.

 

In public and private, the Serbs are now pursuing different lines of attack. Predrag Simic, Serbia and Montenegro's ambassador to France and a member of the Serbian Kosovo negotiating team, evokes the situation leading up to the Second World War to argue against independence for Kosovo.

 

"In 1938," he says, the Western powers, fearful of Hitler, accepted his demand to annex the Sudetenland, the predominantly German inhabited area of Czechoslovakia. But this appeasement "brought neither peace nor security to Europe".

 

However, in private, according to western diplomatic sources, Serbian President Tadic is exploring a more flexible agenda. He wants any settlement to secure the future of the Kosovo Serbs and wants to try and steer proponents of conditional independence into making sure that if this cannot be avoided then, at least for the foreseeable future, Kosovo will have no army or highly symbolic seat at the UN.

 

But Western diplomats are fearful of what they call the "disaster scenario", which foresees the talks failing to gain traction and hardliners on either side opting for violence.

 

The disaster scenario sees either Serbian or Albanian hardliners provoking an exodus from the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo. There are some100,000 Serbs in Kosovo, of which 30,000 live in the solidly Serbian north, while the rest are scattered in enclaves in central and southern Kosovo.

 

Albanian hardliners could decide to attack the enclaves and provoke the flight of the Serbs there, so as to prevent the areas from becoming autonomous regions that would remain, in their view, like Serbian claws in a future independent Kosovo.

 

By contrast Serbian hardliners could seek to provoke a Serbian exodus from the enclaves in a bid to solidify the Serbian population of the north. Their hope would be that many years down the line the de facto partition that already exists along the Ibar river would one day be recognized as the international frontier between the part of Kosovo that Serbia managed to save and the Albanian part, which would be independent.

 

It is precisely because they want to avert such a disaster scenario that the diplomats are now talking intensively to the Serbs and Albanians and among themselves.

 

Indeed, the message diplomats are now delivering to the Kosovo Albanians might come as a surprise to some. According to one source, the Albanians have been warned not to let hardliners provoke violence, but they have also been told that since conditional independence is the aim, "The talks are not about the status of Kosovo. What they are really about then, is negotiating the status of the Serbs in Kosovo," the source said.

From Albanian target practice to gifts of goats, NATO commanders find expanded horizons

Associated Press, Dec 22, 2005 6:55 AM

 

ZALL HERR, Albania-After the crack Albanian unit had blasted a hillside with weapons, the military display came to a startling climax: soldiers marched into the firing range, hoisted targets on their heads or tucked under their arms, and stood square-jawed while their colleagues opened fire.

 

Clearly, the elite commando unit was out to impress.

 

But the spectators were no ordinary bunch. They included NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Gen. James L. Jones and other top officers, on the last leg of a tour that had taken them to the wintry hills overlooking Kabul, the heart of Africa, and Algeria's Mediterranean shore.

 

The five-day, six-nation tour that ended this week illustrated NATO's ongoing struggle to evolve from a Cold War defender of Western Europe to a global security force whose new duties will range from peacekeeping to humanitarian assistance and the fight against terrorism.

 

For their part, the Albanians wanted to demonstrate that their army will be up to NATO standards by 2008, when Albania hopes to join the Western alliance.

 

"This is confidence shooting, the hardest shooting of all," explained a proud Albanian commander.

 

To further demonstrate their prowess, the sharpshooters turned their backs, bent over, and fired from between their legs at the targets held by their unflinching colleagues, as the NATO officers looked on with openmouthed dismay.

 

[...]

 

On Monday, Jones celebrated his 62nd birthday in Albania. A bone-crunching drive over potholed roads took him out of Tirana, the capital, to the commando base where senior Albanian officers serenaded him with a rendition of "Happy Birthday."

 

The NATO visitors may have preferred the Albanians' singing to their training techniques. One shocked European officer said he'd never seen anything like the commandos' shooting display in his long military career.

 

Jones tried to be diplomatic.

 

"The last thing that I ever wanted to do when I was commander in the Marine Corps was have to write a letter to a mother or a father or family whose son or daughter had just died in a stupid training accident," Jones said.

Macedonia's president says border guarantees needed for Kosovo deal

Associated Press, Dec 22, 2005 11:33 AM

 

SKOPJE, Macedonia-Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski on Wednesday said any deal on the future status of neighboring Kosovo must come with guarantees that the province's borders will remain unchanged.

 

Kosovo claims some 2,000 hectares (about 5,000 acres) of disputed Macedonian territory, since a 2001 border agreement between Macedonia and the former Yugoslavia.

 

"We will accept and support any decision that will come out of the negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina that will be backed by the international community," Crvenkovski said in an annual speech to parliament.

 

"But, Macedonia insists on clear guarantees from the international community, above all from Brussels and Washington, on the inviolability of the borders and territorial integrity of our country, regardless of Kosovo's final status."

 

The United Nations has administered Kosovo since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted a Serb crackdown on the province's majority ethnic Albanian community.

 

Serbia wants to retain formal control over Kosovo in the future while the province's ethnic Albanians insist on independence.

 

Talks set to begin in late January are intended to resolve the conflict,

 

Also Wednesday, Albanian President Sali Berisha held talks in Athens with Greek Prime Minister Costas Caramanlis, reportedly covering issues of regional security, including Kosovo.

 

Berisha was returning from a visit to Iraq, where Albania has a small troop presence.

Ancient Blood Feuds Resurface In Kosovo

ONASA-AFP (BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA FEDERATION), Dec 22, 2005 8:27 PM

 

PETROVE, Serbia-Montenegro, Dec 22 (ONASA - AFP) - The centuries-old custom of blood feuds has gripped a part of Kosovo, threatening the lives of people in two clans as it did with thousands of ethnic Albanians in the past.

 

The feud between the two clans began at the end of November when Fadil Mujota, a 36-year-old father of four, was shot dead at a gas station owned by the Beqaj family in the central village of Belinc.

 

"Fadil went to Belinc to fill a tank with gasoline. His friends, who were waiting for him in a nearby cafe, had no time even to put sugar in their coffee when they heard shots and found him covered in blood," said Shaip Mujota, the victim's eldest brother.

 

The circumstances behind the murder are still not clear, although a main suspect, 16-year-old Arlind Beqaj, has been detained pending a trial.

 

The blood feud system is believed to have re-emerged in Kosovo due to a power vacuum during the UN-run province's painful transition from conflict six and a half years ago.

 

As a result, many Albanians in Kosovo have returned to the laws of their tribal roots in a bid to settle disputes, namely the Code of Leke Dukagjini, an Albanian aristocrat from the era of struggle against Ottoman rule in the 14th century.

 

The legal system that has since existed in Kosovo, as well as parts of neighboring Albania, includes the right to kill to avenge murders, or "whoever kills, will be killed".

 

An estimated 50 murders in the province have been linked to blood revenge between the end of Kosovo's 1998-1999 war between Serbian forces and Albanian rebels and the end of last year.

 

"Kosovo is still in a vacuum between strong traditions of the past and modern values," Naim Maloku, sociologist and professor at the Pristina University, told AFP.

 

Maloku noted that Kosovo's society was "deeply patriarchal, torn by its inclination toward the West and by its religious past which originates from the East."

 

"These two civilizations clash, pushing people towards one or another pole and making them oscillate between them," he added.

 

Last week, six brothers from the 60-member Mujota clan were still receiving condolences from friends and family at their homes in the hillside village of Mollopolce.

 

The Mujotas, well-known and respected here for their contribution to the ethnic Albanian guerrilla force that fought Serbian forces during the conflict, could hardly hide their anger at the lack of any rule of law.

 

"Unfortunately, the system does not function. I know that no one can return our brother. God willing, Fadil will be the last victim," said Shaip Mujota.

 

He said he had given his word of honor, or "Besa" -- a rule declaring that any murderer will not to be killed outside his home -- to the Beqajs and their children, "who have to go to school."

 

"I am a teacher and I know that going to school is important," Mujota said. "But we have to know why our brother was killed."

 

Since the killing, the pressure has mounted on both families, aware of the custom that those deciding against vengeance and "honor killings" were seen as cowards and considered unworthy.

 

Although the Dukagjini code also offers ways for the families to reconcile through mediation by influential people respected by both sides, the two clans are yet to find a truce.

 

There were no signs of life outside six traditionally high-walled Beqaj houses in the muddy village of Petrove, set in the eerily calm mountainous region.

 

"We are in a blood feud with the Mujotas," admitted 63-year-old Fehmi Beqaj, the head of the 70-member clan known in the region as successful merchants.

 

"We are waiting for the dispute with the Mujotas to be resolved," he said, adding that their gas station and sawmill businesses had been paralyzed for weeks.

 

Beqaj said the "Besa" offered by the Mujotas would last till the third day of the Muslim Bayram holiday in the middle of February.

 

"Until then, our children can freely go to school, but after it expires, we will be confined to our houses until this dispute is over," Fehmi said, turning down the likelihood the matter could be resolved with the help of police.

 

The feud was "between the two families and will be settled in accordance with the code ... What God decides, will be," he said.

Kosovo: Ombudsman criticizes human rights situation

ADN KRONOS INTERNATIONAL (ITALY), 22-Dec-05 11:55

 

Pristina/Belgrade, 22 Dec. (AKI) - Kosovo ombudsman Marek Novicky has criticised the state of human rights in the province, under United Nations administration since 1999, saying it was "far from international standards".

 

Novicky, appointed by the international community five years ago to supervise the human rights situation in Kosovo, said that ethnic minorities in Kosovo, particularly Serbs and Romanics, "are still not in a position to move around freely", which is limiting their living conditions and economic activities.

 

At a farewell press conference in Pristina on Wednesday evening, Novicky warned that the situation is likely to get worse unless the international community appoints a new human rights watchdog.

 

Chief UN administrator, Soren Jessen Petersen, who has wide arbitrary powers in the province, has decided to pass the human rights supervision to local ethnic Albanian authorities, a move that Novicky considers premature.

 

Petersen has also come in for criticism from Serbian officials in Belgrade for starting the formation of Kosovo justice and police ministries, under majority ethnic Albanians' control. The judiciary and police have been under international control since Serbian forces were pushed from the province by NATO bombing raids in 1999.

 

Dusan Batakovic, an aide to Serbian president Boris Tadic, argued that Petersen had overstepped his competences and that his move would increase the pressure on the remaining 100.000 Serbs in the province.

 

Over 200.000 Serbs and other non-Albanians have fled Kosovo since 1999, whose majority ethnic Albanians demand independence. Belgrade opposes independence, though it has no more authority in Kosovo, and talks on the final status of the province are expected to begin in January.

Serbia says new Kosovo ministries a dangerous move

STUFF (NEW ZEALAND), 22 December 2005

 

BELGRADE: Serbia today said it was a "reckless and dangerous political move" to transfer the authority of the police and justice sectors to the ethnic Albanian dominated population of its Kosovo province.

 

On Tuesday the United Nations, which took over the administration of Kosovo in 1999 after Nato bombing forced Serb forces to pull out, formally established ministries in the two sensitive sectors which had so far been in UN hands.

 

Serbia said the move came at a very bad time when the Serb and Kosovo Albanian sides were starting UN-mediated talks on whether the province becomes independent, as the majority Albanians demand or stays part of Serbia, as it now formally is.

 

"At the very start of talks on the future status of Kosovo such moves only go in favour of the extremist policy of the Albanian leadership in the province," the government's team for Kosovo talks said in a statement.

 

The government urged Kosovo's UN governor Soren Jessen-Petersen to reconsider his decision which "jeopardises Serb and other non-Albanian communities in the province and directly burdens political talks on Kosovo's future status." The UN officials say the justice and police ministries, which will assume their responsibilities gradually will be subject to a "vigorous accountability policy" and the UN governor will have the right to intervene.

 

The 90-per cent ethnic Albanian majority is increasingly impatient for independence, but Serbia says this is impossible and has offered the province wide autonomy.

 

Last month, UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari started shuttle diplomacy aimed at reconciling the two opposing visions. A decision on whether Kosovo will get the independence the Albanians demand is expected in the second half of next year.

 

The two sides are expected to meet face-to-face in the second half of January, probably in Vienna where Ahtisaari has set up his headquarters.

UNMIK allows two new ministries in Kosovo

Beta News Agency, Belgrade, December 21, 2005

 

PRISTINA -- Wednesday - The Kosovo government was officially presented with the rules for forming the interior and justice ministries yesterday, which, in the absence of UNMIK chief Soren Jessen-Petersen, were signed by his first deputy, Lawrence Rossin.

 

Kosovo Premier Bajram Kosumi, speaking at a special news conference after he received the signed rules from the deputy UNMIK chief in charge of police and the judiciary, Jean Dussourd, said this was "a significant day for all citizens of Kosovo."

 

Kosumi said this was "a good and strong signal for the processes underway in Kosovo," adding that the decision on the forming of these ministries was "a result of everything that has been done so far."

 

"The forming of these two ministries is a result of the great progress accomplished in Kosovo during the six post-war years. This is a result of a consolidation of democratic institutions in Kosovo and of the good job the government and UNMIK have done in the creation of a more secure environment for all the citizens of Kosovo," Kosumi said.

 

The Kosovo premier said the issue of appointing new ministers was a part of the agreement between the Democratic Alliance of Kosovo and the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo.

 

He said there have been no concrete official nominations for the two positions so far, and that it was up to the coalition partners to agree on how to divide the offices.

 

The UNMIK deputy chief in charge of police and the judiciary, Jean Dussourd, also said the event was significant for all communities living in Kosovo.

 

"It is time for the institutions of Kosovo to assume responsibility. There is much work to do after the signing of the rules on the forming of the two ministries, and we will do this together with the premier and government," Dussourd said.

Envoy hopes Kosovo parties will discuss decentralization next month

UN NEWS CENTRE, 20 December 2005

 

Whatever the final status of the United Nations-administered Serbian province of Kosovo, majority Albanians must discuss decentralization and minority Serbs must participate in the talks, the UN special envoy on the issue said today.

 

"My understanding is we will see the parties discussing decentralization in Vienna, hopefully in the latter part of January," former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, whose UN Office of Special Envoy in Kosovo (UNOSEK) is based in the Austrian capital, told a news conference at UN Headquarters in New York.

 

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said final options could include independence or autonomy for Kosovo, where Albanians outnumber Serbs and others by 9 to 1. Serbia rejects independence for the province which the UN has run ever since North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid grave rights abuses in ethnic fighting.

 

Mr. Ahtisaari, who visited all parties to the dispute last month, said he had set no "artificial deadlines" for the final status talks although he would like to see them completed within the one-year timeframe of his contract.

 

He stressed the need for implementation of the so-called Standards, eight targets that include building democratic institutions, enforcing minority rights, creating a functioning economy and setting up an impartial legal system.

 

"My message to Kosovo Albanians in my discussions was that they should use this opportunity. to put more effort into the implementation of standards," he said. "We have to realize as well that standards are for ensuring a functioning democratic society and furthermore they are Kosovo's key to life and Serbia's key to Europe."

 

It is clear that one of the crucial issues is the protection of non-Albanian communities in Kosovo and that everyone realizes this requires reform structure and local self-government, he added. Kosovo Albanians must take this into consideration and engage in talks on decentralization, and the Serbs must participate in the process.

 

In a report in July, Mr. Annan's Special Representative for Kosovo Søren Jessen-Petersen stressed the need for stronger commitment by Kosovo's Albanian leaders to move forward on the return of Serbs who fled their homes during the fighting as well as on freedom of movement.

 

Last month, he said far too little had been done by Albanian leaders in terms of reaching out to minorities and really showing that Kosovo is strongly committed to being a multi-ethnic society.

Kosovo should be preserved within existing borders

PRAVDA (RUSSIAN FEDERATION), 19:23 2005-12-20

 

A solution for Kosovo and Metohija should be sought within the existing borders, with substantial autonomy and respect for the rights of all national communities in the region, Serbian Premier Vojislav Kostunica pointed out on Dec. 19.

 

"Independence is not a compromise. A different level of autonomy for Kosovo and Metohija is a compromise", the Serbian premier said. He also said that, within Kosovo's autonomy, special autonomy should be provided for non-Albanians in the province.

 

Bulgarian Premier Sergey Stanisev said he was opposed to creating new borders in the Western Balkans, cautioning that the region must not bring up the past and endless divisions again. "The Kosovo talks must produce a mutually acceptable solution, and decentralisation should guarantee the rights of all citizens of Kosovo," Beta News Agency quoted Bulgarian premier as saying.

Kosovo could one day be self-sufficient - UN envoy

Reuters, Tue Dec 20, 2005 10:44 PM GMT By Irwin Arieff

 

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Kosovo has enough natural resources, including low-grade coal, to one day make it economically self-sufficient, the United Nations mediator for the disputed Serb province said on Tuesday.

 

Veteran diplomat Martti Ahtisaari, who is leading U.N. talks aimed at determining whether Kosovo gains independence or remains a part of Serbia, said economic development would be a top priority in the negotiations.

 

Kosovo is heavily subsidised by international donors, and "when the international community knows that there are natural resources which are not exploited, you can't expect the world's taxpayers to finance this forever," Ahtisaari told reporters at U.N. headquarters.

 

"Everyone wants to create conditions in which these can be properly exploited," he said.

 

If that happens "I think there is in the future the possibility for sustainable economic development in Kosovo," he said when asked whether it could ever support itself economically.

 

While still legally part of Serbia, Kosovo has been under U.N. administration since mid-1999, when Serbian forces were driven out to stop what the West said was their persecution of ethnic Albanians during an uprising by Albanian guerrillas.

 

The province's 2 million Albanians -- 90 percent of the population -- are demanding independence.

 

Serbs, however, see the mountain-ringed province with its scores of centuries-old Orthodox religious sites as the cradle of their nation and insist it remain a part of Serbia.

 

Ahtisaari said the World Bank believes that among Kosovo's natural resources were supplies of lignite that would last 50 to 75 years. Lignite is a low-grade form of coal that is used mainly to create steam for power generation.

 

To exploit the lignite will require significant international help. But when used to generate power, "it will be extremely useful for the economy of Kosovo and also for the provision of energy in the region in general," Ahtisaari said.

UN creates police and justice ministries in Kosovo

Associated Press, Dec 20, 2005 12:20 PM

 

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-The United Nations created two new ministries in Kosovo on Tuesday, transferring responsibilities for justice and police to the province's authorities.

 

The move was welcomed by Kosovo's Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi, who said the government can meet the new tasks, but failed to say who will head the two key ministries.

 

The transfer represented a "proof of confidence" that the province's fledgling institutions are capable of taking on "full responsibility and accountability" on these sensitive matters, said Jean Dussourd, a U.N. official dealing with the issue.

 

The United Nations has warned that the duties will be transferred on the condition that there is effective monitoring, accountability and training.

 

Despite the transfer, the global body maintains its authority over the province's affairs. The work of the two new ministries will be subject to a three-month review, Dussourd said.

 

The move, which is seen as a sign of increasing control by the Kosovo government over the province's affairs, has been criticized by Serbia's authorities.

 

The United Nations has administered Kosovo since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

Serbia wants to retain at least formal control over Kosovo in the future while the province's ethnic Albanians insist on gaining independence.

 

U.N.-mediated talks to resolve the issue are expected to start next year.

 

The province has an elected parliament, government and the president with limited powers. It also has a local police service of 7,500 officers who serve alongside 2,700 U.N. police officers.

 

Earlier this month, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe issued a report criticizing Kosovo's U.N.-run justice system for failing to condemn the worst outbreak of ethnic violence that rocked the province last year.

 

The report assessed the court cases dealing with two days of rioting in March 2004 when ethnic Albanian mobs targeted minority Serbs in a wave of attacks that killed 19 people and left thousands homeless.

Albania pushes for Kosovo status to be solved by mid-2006

RELIEF WEB (SWITZERLAND)

 

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Date: 20 Dec 2005

 

SOFIA, Dec 20 (AFP) - Albanian Foreign Minister Besnik Mustafaj expressed hopes Tuesday that long-awaited talks on Kosovo's status would culminate by mid-2006 with independence for the UN-administered province.

 

"We support (UN Special Envoy for Kosovo) Martti Ahtisaari's aim for a fast outcome to the talks. Any prolongation will hinder the process. Our hope is the target deadline of mid-2006 will be met," Mustafaj told a press conference in Sofia.

 

Tirana has generally backed Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership in its demands for unconditional independence and recently declared there was no risk of annexation as Albania has no territorial claims towards the province.

 

But Mustafaj pointed out Tuesday "an independent Kosovo would make sense only if it is based on a government of law."

 

Serbia and Kosovo are scheduled to begin direct talks next January on the status of the UN-administered Serbian province.

 

The key issue in the talks will be whether to grant the province independence, which its 90-percent Albanian majority population wants but which Belgrade fiercely opposes, insisting the province is an inalienable part of Serbian territory and culture.

 

Speaking Monday in Sofia, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica reiterated his country's opposition to a redrawing of borders in the region, calling it "dangerous".

 

"We have to look for a solution within the existing borderlines, with a high-degree of autonomy taking into consideration the rights of all ethnic groups" in Kosovo, Kostunica said.

US diplomat prosecuted for indecent behavior in Albania

XINHUA (CHINA), 2005-12-20 17:40:23

 

TIRANA, Dec. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- A male American diplomat alleged to have had sexual relations with several Albanian young boys during his terms here was prosecuted in the United States, local reports said on Tuesday.

 

According to the Albanian Courier newspaper, Stuart Moss was information attache of the U.S. embassy in Albania when he was alleged to have had sexual inter-courses with the Albanian boys, aged between 12 and 16, in his rented apartment in central Tirana.

 

Moss himself even recorded the indecent scenes with his own video camera, the report said.

 

The report said Moss' home in Virginia was raided and the videotapes found after Albanian police had notified U.S. State Department of Moss' indecent behavior.

 

Moss, in his 50s, is currently in bail and the Virginia state court set the date for his trial on February 3, 2006.

 

If found guilty, he is likely to be imprisoned for 10 years, the report said.  Enditem

Kostunica: Do Not Experiment with Borders on the Balkans

SOFIA NEWS AGENCY (BULGARIA), 19 December 2005, Monday

 

There is no good to experiment with the borders on the Balkans, as it might open the way of a dangerous adventure, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said in Sofia.

 

After meeting with his Bulgarian counterpart Sergey Stanishev, Kostunica stated Belgrade will advocate for "an enlarged autonomy of Kosovo" and warned that otherwise it could create a precedent to affect the stability of the region.

 

Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev called for direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina on the future status of Kosovo.

 

During the two-day visit of Kostunica to Bulgaria, the heads of Bulgarian and Serbian governments opened the railway route Dragoman-Kalotina, connecting the two neighbouring countries.

 

"I am extremely satisfied with the active political dialogue between Bulgaria and Serbia in the past years," Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov said at the beginning of his meeting with Kostunica on Monday.

 

In the words of Kostunica the national minorities should be a bridge between the two neighboring countries. He explained that the government will do what is necessary in order to overcome the technical obstacles for providing conditions for Bulgarians in Bosilegrad to study their mother language in schools.

 

Bosilegrad is a Serbian town located few kilometers away from the western Bulgarian border where a considerably large Bulgarian minority lives.

 

Kostunica and Stanishev also discussed the interest of Bulgarian companies to invest in Serbia. "The economic relations between our countries should be at a higher level. They should reach the political relations, which are very well developed," Kostunica noted.

 

According to Bulgarian premier, the two countries need better infrastructure in order to facilitate and promote the economic relations between the two countries. Stanishev highlighted as a priority for the country - and of their bilateral relations - the Pan-European corridor No. 7 running through Sofia-Nis-Beograd.

Rice Appoints U.S. Envoy for Negotiations on Status of Kosovo

BLOOMBERG (USA), December 19, 2005 21:17 EST

 

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appointed an envoy to the United Nations-led talks on the status of Kosovo province in Serbia, saying the issue is key to ensuring stability in Southeast Europe.

 

Rice appointed Frank G. Wisner, a diplomat for more than 30 years, who served as U.S. ambassador to India, the Philippines, Egypt and Zambia, the State Department said in a statement e- mailed today from Washington.

 

The U.S. will support UN efforts to ``secure a settlement on Kosovo's status that promotes security for all peoples of the Balkans and advances the region's integration with Euro-Atlantic institutions,'' the State Department said.

 

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Martti Ahtisaari, a former president of Finland, to oversee the talks for Kosovo, which is administered by the UN. Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's population of 1.9 million people, want the province to become independent, while Serbia's government says it must remain part of Serbia and Montenegro.

 

Ahtisaari visited the region in November, holding talks with the ethnic Albanian government in Pristina and Serbia's government in Belgrade.

 

Kosovo needs to meet international standards such as the ethnic-Albanian government building democratic institutions and guaranteeing minority rights and Serbia encouraging the minority ethnic Serbs to participate in talks, Ahtisaari said after his visit, according to UN.

 

There isn't a deadline for the mission, said Ahtisaari, who will base his team in Austria's capital, Vienna. He is scheduled to return to Pristina and Belgrade to resume discussions early next year, the UN said.

 

Independence Plan

 

The ethnic-Albanian government presented Ahtisaari with its plans for independence while Serbia's government told Ahtisaari that granting Kosovo independence would cause ``dramatic tremors'' in the Balkans, in Europe and the world.

 

An estimated 200,000 ethnic Serbians have left the region since the area came under UN control in 1999. About 80,000 Serbs live in areas protected by the UN's peacekeeping force. The UN took over running Kosovo after North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing ended a crackdown by the government of the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on ethnic Albanians.

 

Ahtisaari's Crisis Management Initiative group earlier this year mediated peace talks between the Indonesian government and rebels in Aceh province that resulted in a peace treaty in August.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net

Five countries to build joint oil pipeline

FINANCIAL TIMES (UK) Published: December 20 2005 02:00 | Last updated: December 20 2005 02:00 By Carola Hoyos in London

 

Five countries are expected to sign in January an agreement to build an oil pipeline from Romania to Italy.

 

It is the latest move in the intensely competitive and politically fraught battle over who controls, and who benefits from, the Caspian's growing oil production.

 

Cabinet ministers from Romania, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy are expected to meet in Rome to agree on the formation of a development company for the 1,500km pipeline.

 

The project, which includes rehabilitating Romania's Black Sea port Constanta, would cost at least $2.4bn (€2bn, £1.4bn), a feasibility study has found. People close to the project said two key oil companies, one international energy group and one state-owned energy company, had expressed interest.

 

Henry Owen, a financial adviser to the project, said the pipeline would feed refineries in south-eastern Europe, Italy, Austria and Bavaria and would send oil to tankers via an existing pipeline from Trieste to the deepwater port at Genoa.

 

It would reduce European dependence on Middle Eastern oil, would be outside Russian control and would help to alleviate some of the congestion in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, analysts said.

 

But they warned that the pipeline faced several competitors and that an agreement could still be scuttled by one of the five states. If the signing ceremony proceeds, the next big hurdle will be reaching agreement on the pipeline tariffs.

 

Ian Woollen, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, the UK-based consultants, said: "It is a step forward, but there is still a long way to go. There are a lot of competing options that make more sense logistically and commercially."

 

Two pipelines that would originate in Burgas, Bulgaria, compete with the so-called Pan-European Pipeline from Constanta to Trieste. One would send oil to Alexandroupolis in Greece, the other to Vlore on Albania's Adriatic coast.

 

Politics plays as much of a role as money. Russia's interest in controlling the region's oil flow, and the US opposing objective in diversifying the power away from Moscow, mix with the broader tug between Asia and Europe, both large markets keen to receive the oil.

 

Meanwhile, Turkey wants to reduce the strain of shipping almost all the region's oil through the dangerously busy Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits, but does not want to lose control of the power and the income that comes with being such an important trading gateway.

 

Altogether a dozen pipelines are proposed for the region. The most significant new pipeline is the BP-led Baku to Ceyhan line, expected to open this spring.

Rail link between Kosovo, Macedonia reopened after six years

Associated Press, Dec 20, 2005 5:50 AM

 

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-A railroad linking Kosovo and Macedonia reopened Tuesday, six years after it was shuttered because of fighting in the Kosovo war.

 

The link hasn't operated since 1999, when a NATO-led air campaign halted a Serb crackdown on independence-minded ethnic Albanians.

 

A group of U.N., Kosovo and Macedonian officials rode the train Tuesday from the central station in Kosovo Polje on its 80 kilometer journey, or nearly 50 miles, south to Skopje.

 

Serb forces had used trains in 1999 to expel tens of thousands of Albanians into neighboring Macedonia.

 

"Many people in Kosovo have bad memories associated with this particular train station," said Larry Rossin, the deputy head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo during the ceremony in Kosovo Polje.

 

But, he praised the opening of the line as crucial for residents seeking to travel freely within the region.

 

Kosovo has been administered by U.N. since 1999.

Chirac calls for dialogue between Albanians, Serbs

XINHUA (CHINA), 2005-12-20 05:38:56

 

PARIS, Dec. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- French President Jacques Chirac on Monday called on Serbs and ethnic Albanians to hold negotiations over the status of Kosovo in a spirit of dialogue, Chirac's office said.

 

The president made the appeal when he and visiting Serbian President Boris Tadic held talks which were mainly devoted to the situation in Kosovo.

 

Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians demand independence while Belgrade is only ready to authorize a large autonomy to the province where more than 90 percent of the population is Albanian. Direct negotiations are expected to begin in January to determine the final status of the province put under a UN trusteeship since 1999.

 

Chirac said that he hoped all parties would begin the negotiation in a spirit of dialogue and in respect for directive principles established by the United Nations Security Council, Chirac's spokesman Jerome Bonnafont said.

 

The French president said that the stakes are to organize the coexistence of cultures and peoples in the respect for legal interests of everyone.

 

Chirac reiterated the commitments of the international community and the European Union (EU) to help the reconciliation and noted that France would like to bring all its contribution to a peaceful and sustainable solution to the issue.

 

Tadic, considered as a pro-European reformer, is on a two-day official visit, his first trip to France after his taking office in June 2004. Enditem

NATO and Belgrade To Cooperate on Kosovo Stability

DEFENSE NEWS (USA), Posted 12/19/05 09:16 By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, BELGRADE

 

NATO's commander for southeastern Europe and Serbia's president agreed on Dec. 18 to work together to maintain stability in the troubled UN-run Serbian province of Kosovo during talks on its future status, the Tanjug news agency reported.

 

"We will do everything to prevent violence and our telephone lines will be open 24 hours a day," Serbian President Boris Tadic said after meeting Admiral Harry Ulrich.

 

Direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina are expected to begin in January.

 

Kosovo has been administered by a United Nations mission since June 1999 when a 78-day NATO bombing campaign drove out Serbian forces in response to their crackdown against separatist ethnic Albanian rebels.

 

Some 17,000 NATO-led peacekeeping forces (KFOR) have been deployed throughout the disputed province.

 

Tensions remain high as ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population of Kosovo, want to break away from Belgrade which considers the province to be the cradle of Serbian culture and history.

 

KFOR was severely criticized after it failed to halt a three-day outburst of anti-Serb rioting in the province in March 2004, that left 19 dead and 900 wounded.

 

More than 4,000 Serbs fled the province at the time while hundreds of their houses were burned or otherwise destroyed as well as dozens of Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries.

Runaway Macedonian Albanian arrested in Kosovo is "extreme Islamist"

BBCM, December 19, 2005 Monday

 

Excerpt from report by Daniela Veljanovska entitled "Extreme Islamist Ramadan Shiti arrested in Kosovo" published by Macedonian newspaper Dnevnik on 19 December

 

Well-known criminal Ramadan Shiti (22), who made a spectacular escape from the Skopje investigative jail in the Suto Orizari district in May this year, was arrested in Kosovo the day before yesterday [17 December].

 

According to the Macedonian security services, he is a member of an extreme Islamist group.

 

Along with him, the Kosovar authorities also arrested Macedonian nationals Amir Shkreta and Mehmed Dalipi, who are believed to have helped Shiti to escape from prison.

 

The Macedonian Interior Ministry has confirmed the report, saying that it will urgently seek to get the fugitive and the two criminals handed over to Macedonia. The spokesmen for Kfor [Kosovo Force] and UNMIK [UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo] were unavailable for comment yesterday. We have learned that Ramadan Shiti had been wanted in Kosovo for the murder of a Kosovar policeman.

 

[Passage omitted on Shiti's criminal record in Macedonia]

 

Source: Dnevnik, Skopje, in Macedonian 19 Dec 05 p 3

Ramadan Shiti captured by Soldiers in Kosovo

U.S. ARMY NEWS SERVICE, Dec. 19, 2005

 

CAMP BONDSTEEL, Kosovo - Multinational Brigade East Soldiers captured escaped fugitive Ramadan Shiti and two associates, Mehmet Dalipi and Ahmet Shkret, Dec. 16 near the village of Drobnjak.

 

Shiti, wanted under both international and Kosovo arrest warrants, was taken into custody at about 9:15 p.m. by military police Soldiers from MNB(E)'s Task Force Dragoon and Kosovo Police Service officers following a nearly six hour pursuit through a rough and remote region of the Kacanik municipality.

 

KFOR soldiers from the Polish-Ukrainian Peacekeeping Battalion and Task Force Shadow, MNB(E)'s aviation support battalion, also assisted in the pursuit and capture of the fugitives.

 

Shiti, a member of the Kondovo group, escaped from confinement in Skopje, Macedonia on May 10, 2005. He was being held there awaiting trial for the murder of a taxi driver.

 

Shiti was first spotted at about 3:30 p.m. Friday afternoon by a MNB(E) leaders' reconnaissance patrol in the vicinity of Melic. After reporting the sighting and requesting assistance, the MNB(E) patrol initiated pursuit of Shiti.

 

MNB(E) aerial reconnaissance and observation assets, POLUKR battalion quick reaction forces, and additional military police Soldiers were brought in to assist in the chase. The POLUKR battalion also established a wide area cordon and set up vehicle check points throughout the area.

 

After matching Shiti's identity to the international warrant, KFOR soldiers turned him over to UNMIK-P's special police unit. Dalipi and Shkret were transferred to the Kacanik KPS station for processing.

Serbia wants broad-reaching autonomy for Kosovo

Associated Press, Dec 19, 2005 8:23 AM

 

SOFIA, Bulgaria-Kosovo needs broad-reaching autonomy and better protection of minorities, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said Monday, but confirmed Belgrade's readiness to seek a compromise with Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.

 

"The Kosovo issue must be solved by (granting it) broad autonomy ... and not by drawing new borderlines, which create precedents and divide people," Kostunica told reporters in Sofia after meeting Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. "Kosovo needs better protection of all minorities and more powers for the local authorities."

 

Kostunica reaffirmed Serbia's readiness "to find a solution for Kosovo through negotiations, by reaching a mutually acceptable ... compromise."

 

The U.N.-mediated talks on Kosovo's future status are expected to formally begin in January.

 

Although still officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, the United Nations has administered Kosovo since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

Serbia wants to retain at least formal control over Kosovo in the future while the province's ethnic Albanians insist on gaining independence.

 

Bulgaria has said it will agree with any deal that would be mutually acceptable for Serbia-Montenegro and the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

 

On Monday, however, Stanishev appeared to agree with Kostunica that changing state borders would be a step back.

 

"This sensitive issue should be solved in a way that would bring stability for the whole region, instead of taking us back to the past by creating new division lines," Stanishev said.

 

He also said that international presence, including that of the NATO-led peacekeeping force, KFOR, was still essential for Kosovo's security and stability.

Serbia warns of disintegration of the Balkans

EURACTIV ENGLISH, Dec 19, 2005 5:00 AM

 

Brief News: In a unanimously adopted resolution, the government of Serbia on 15 November rejected independence for Kosovo ahead of the UN-mediated talks on the future of the breakaway province scheduled to open in December. According to the draft resolution, Kosovo's territory "is an inalienable part" of Serbia, and Belgrade will consider "any imposed solution illegitimate and unacceptable". At the same time, the resolution would allow for a national referendum to be held in Serbia to approve the conclusions of the UN-mediated talks, which will be presided over by UN envoy Marti Ahtisaari. The resolution would still need to be approved by the Serbian parliament.

 

Kosovo has been run by a UN mission since 1999. While the Serbs consider Kosovo an integral part of their republic, Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian population wants outright independence rather than maximum autonomy.

 

According to Serbian President Boris Tadic, several states in the Balkans could disintegrate if the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo have their way. "Kosovo and Metohia are not only Serbia's problem," Tadic said. "They are a problem of the entire European continent as well."

 

The Commission's 2005 progress report for Serbia and Montenegro said that "Belgrade's constructive engagement in the Kosovo issue will help to advance Serbia and Montenegro's European prospects, while obstruction could become an obstacle".

NATO commander pledges safety for all in Kosovo

XINHUA (CHINA), 2005-12-19 04:54:38

 

BELGRADE, Dec. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- NATO's South Wing Commander, US Admiral Harry Ulrich, said here on Sunday that the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo (KFOR) would be able to ensure the safety of all in the southern Serbian province.

 

"I have complete trust in KFOR forces," Ulrich told a press conference following his talks with Serbian President Boris Tadic.

 

He said that NATO's South Wing headquarters in Naples was ready to strengthen its cooperation with Serbia-Montenegro.

 

Kosovo, a Serbian pro-independence province, has been administered by the United Nations and KFOR since mid-1999. The talks on its future status are expected to be held early next year under the auspices of UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

 

President Tadic said that he and Ulrich had expressed readiness to do all they could so as to prevent any possible escalation of violence in Kosovo.

 

On Sunday, Ulrich also met Serbia-Montenegro Defense Minister Zoran Stankovic and other senior officials, to discuss the situation in the region, particularly that in Kosovo and South Serbia, as well as the further improvement of bilateral cooperation. Enditem

NATO commander for southeast Europe discusses Kosovo with Serbian leaders

Associated Press, Dec 18, 2005 3:05 PM

 

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro-NATO's commander for southeastern Europe met Serbian leaders Sunday to discuss security in Kosovo ahead of talks on the disputed province's future status, news reports said.

 

Adm. Harry Ulrich met with Serbia's pro-Western president Boris Tadic, Defense Minister Zoran Stankovic and army chief of staff Gen. Ljubisa Jokic, the Serbian media reported.

 

U.N.-mediated status talks with Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders are expected to start next year.

 

Kosovo formally remains part of Serbia, but it has been run by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign forced Belgrade to end a crackdown on ethnic Albanians there.

 

Serbia hopes to retain at least formal control over Kosovo in the future while the province's ethnic Albanians insist on gaining independence.

 

State-run Serbian television reported that Ulrich and Tadic agreed to boost cooperation to prevent any tensions in Kosovo ahead of the status negotiations.

 

The TV station also said that the two agreed that the future solution for Kosovo should guarantee stability for the entire region.

 

Ulrich reportedly added that the international troops in Kosovo are fully capable of preserving stability in the province.

 

His meetings with Stankovic and Jokic also focused on Kosovo, regional stability and ways to boost cooperation between NATO and Serbia's military.

Kosovo's war on property rights

SERBIANNA (USA), Sunday, December 18, 2005 By M. Bozinovich

 

Imagine yourself away from your home, perhaps vacationing, during which time a self appointed authority sells your home and in anticipation of your grievance sets up a panel of judges that will decide whether you are deserving of a compensation and in what amount. It's bad enough that you lost control of your own property and have to go through unnecessary legal proceedings but when the panel of judges decides to pay you way less then what you could have sold the property... you decide to leave.

 

Congratulations! You've been successfully cleansed from the territory.

 

Well, this is exactly what is happening in the UN administered Kosovo province and the cleansing is ethnic. In Kosovo, the UN has formed a Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA) and empowered it to seize Serbian owned property and do precisely as with your imagined home. Worse yet, no Serbian owner has been reimbursed for the loss of property so far and given terror that accompanies any movement of ethnic minorities in Kosovo, the 5 judges on the panel may end up collecting a salary just for wearing the robes of justice during this massive property plunder.

 

Institutionalized Plunder

 

Standard jurisprudence assumes that the owner of the property also has the right of its control but during the long march of the enemies of private property - communists, nazis and various leftists and nationalist movements including those in the Balkans - control of the property has been virtually wiped out across the globe and as Kosovo indicates, the very foundation of liberty, that of property ownership, is under a global attack by schemes proclaimed legal by the fiat of power. Even in the chambers of the American Supreme Court, a supposed last remaining fortress of sanity, a judge was found who affirmed property seizures. In the typical protocol of anti-liberty, the seizures were relabeled with a new jargon - eminent domain.

 

"[S]pecter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory," wrote Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in her dissenting opinion on the eminent domain.

 

However, in Kosovo, condemnation of property may no longer be a specter but rather an institutionalized practice. According to the Regulation No. 2005/18 the KTA "shall possess full juridical personality and in particular the capacity to enter into contracts, acquire, hold and dispose of property," and item 5.1 of the regulation grants KTA the authority to administer any property owned by government that was "registered in Kosovo as at 31 December 1988 or any subsequent date," or any assets "located in the territory of Kosovo since 22 March 1989."

 

Serbian government that has pumped in over $17 billion into Kosovo from the taxes confiscated from ordinary Serbs since 1970 alone was suddenly dispossessed of all property by a UN Resolution.

 

The Resolution itself, just like all other confiscatory laws developed in the West, are an evolution, a slow marginal process of subsequential precedents whose source may necessarily be a pressure group and not the commonly accepted principle of jurisprudence. In case of Kosovo, however, these subsequential legal precedents are being developed in an environment that closely approximates absence of law.

 

"The laws that the Serbian regime promoted and implemented in Kosova after 1989 were illegal from the constitutional perspective and the result of violence. These were discriminating laws... Fictitious ownership transactions and forceful 'integrations' that happened at that time cannot be considered as legal," opines Riinvest Institute, an economic research arm for the Kosovo separatist movement of the President Ibrahim Rugova's political wing.

 

The Institute held this belief since its foundation in 1995 because of its separatist political aims and not necessarily sound jurisprudence but... the UNMIK that governs Kosovo wholeheartedly agreed with these separatist goals and suspended all laws that were in effect in the province since March 22, 1989, including those that regulate property and commerce. UN then definitively threw property rights out in the wind and the only challenge was whom should the property be reassigned.

 

Ethnic-based Property Rights

 

The first step in Kosovo's evolution of ethnic-based property rights was in May 2000 when UNMIK published a paper called "Enterprise Development Strategy" or the "White Paper" that attempted to deal with the peculiarity of the Yugoslav social ownership of property that governed Kosovo municipalities and concluded that a Kosovo Agency for Privatization was necessary. The paper did not elaborate on the specifics of the mandate for this Agency but it did stipulate management rules of the enterprises.

 

In June of 2000, the World Bank got into the mix and suggested that socially owned enterprises can be classified into 5 distinct privatization groups and suggested a privatization method of asset liquidation, auctions and management concessions for very large enterprises, namely Trepca mines that many covet internationally.

 

         The Zeqiri family from Albania illegally squatting land in Kosovo. Global Policy Forum reports an "epidemic of illegal house building" in Kosovo.

 

World Bank's report was the critical mass that the UNMIK sought in order to satisfy the swell of pressure by the Kosovo Albanians eager to eradicate property ownership of Serbian entities.

 

By October of 2000, the eradication was underway. That month, first Municipal elections in Kosovo were held and the victorious Ibrahim Rugova's LDK party took over local municipalities whose representatives appropriated control of the local enterprise for itself and appointed managers in them that were politically connected to the party and/or come from the same clan as the municipality chief. The Gnjilane municipality, for example, appointed a manager at the Jugoterm who began paying out holiday bonuses while diverting assets and business to his own private company.

 

Asset stripping and threats of violence were rampant. At a Battery Factory IBG, the manager had to evacuate his family due to threats on their life; at the Pristina based Higijena Teknika the manager hired body guards because LDK officials were threatening to kill him. Meanwhile, in August 2001 the workers at Higijena Teknika seized the garbage trucks and the landfills and threatened violence if the municipality appointed director is not installed.

 

Kosovo property chaos instigated by appeasing separatists was addressed in June of 2002 by the Regulation No. 2002/13 that establishes KTA and a Special Chamber of the Supreme Court of Kosovo to be made up of 5 judges, 3 of which are internationals and 2 local Albanians. The primary mandate of the special chamber was to resolve property claims on the enterprises it appropriated to itself for administration. Technically, regulation 2002/13 removed political control of the enterprises by the municipalities but it did not define who owns the property.

 

The LDK leadership and Rugova were keen on this regulation because it also initiated restructuring of the enterprises by breaking up the enterprises into smaller units, incorporating them and selling them on the market where his political cronies could snap them at depressed prices.

 

By July 2003 the first wave of privatization was complete and 6 enterprises were sold. There were no Serbian bidders and all sales went to ethnic Albanians. The prized possession, the mighty Energoinvest whose parent company is a stellar performer on the nascent Belgrade Stock Exchange, had only 5 bidders for the broken up units bought by an ethnic Albanian company, Arda Rei for little over 1.2 million Euros. The new owner, Afrim Ethemi along with Behgjet Pacolli are the emerging Kosovo Albanian oligarchy that may no longer depend on illegal money to fund the Albanian separatism in the province.

 

Serbia objected to the privatization process on basis that it violates property rights but after 3 stoppages, KTA continues to privatize Kosovo's enterprises. On November 30, 2005 KTA has launched its 11th wave.

 

Grievances

 

Veselin Kocanovic, a coordinator for development and reconstruction for the Coordination Center for Kosovo, says that the UN is misappropriating Serbian property through privatization because it forces the owner to relinquish control of its property that is intrinsic within the principle of property ownership. According to Jessen-Petersen's decision, says Kocanovic, property ownership is irrelevant because it can be established by litigation at some later date.

 

"I would love to hear the views of the Venice Commission on the privatization in Kosovo," says attorney Nikola Radosavovic who represents 17 plaintiffs in Kosovo property confiscations. Among his clients is Sartid, a Serbian steel company now owned by US Steel, whose assets were confiscated in Kosovo.

 

"Although sale of socially owned property can be explained from the economic perspective, it cannot from the legal, because Serbs are precluded from the bidding by an atmosphere of intimidation," says Radosavovic.

 

So far the Kosovo Trust Agency that runs the privatization process has sold off 145 firms for 148 million Euros, which translates in an average selling price of little over 1 million Euros and critics like Radosavovic argue that this is too low of a price and the depressed prices may indicate that the privatization was done in a rigged market that is transparently flawed.

 

As a result of the flawed market, the KTA trust fund appears to be insolvent before it paid out a single settlement.

 

According to the KTA rules, 80% of the sales proceeds are to go into a trust that will be used to compensate ownership claims while 20% is to be used to compensate the workers of the privatized enterprise so that based on the collected revenues thus far, 118 million Euros is to be allocated for property compensation and 30 million for the workers. However, two property rights suits brought by Jugobanka add up to more then 75 million Euros against the trust fund while suddenly, records of Serbs employed at various privatized enterprises are missing.

 

"When Soren Jessen-Petersen was asked to whom does the property of enterprises belong he said the workers. Now that Serb workers have been fired and every trace of them ever being employed erased the KTA is forcing these vanquished Serbs to prove that they were employed in the first place," says Radosavovic. "The exception was only at one firm, UTVA, where 10 Serbs were somehow found on the employment list."

 

The complaints against the UNs suspension of post-1989 laws and contracts in Kosovo are mounting. Kocanovic cites the case of a Pristina-based wallpaper company, Fazita, that was originally purchased by a firm Sinteleon from Backa Palanka located in Vojvodina province. When Fazita was sold, the majority Albanian workers cashed in by selling their shares of stock to Sinteleon. In 2002, Kosovo's international authorities have declared Sinteleon's purchase null and void and Fazita was resold. Sinteleon was never compensated.

 

"All warnings sent to the UN, World Bank, IMF and others that the privatization is against private property principles and basic tenants of a market economy were futile," says Kocanovic.

 

Unofficial sources say that the Serbian negotiating team is actively recruiting economic and business experts to catalogue the property and its finances in the province and present the economic case that may demonstrate that Kosovo's independence may be more of an economic problem then a solution.

 

Meanwhile, assault on private property continues unabated in Kosovo.

The Contact Group: Point of information on Kosovo's future statute talks

RELIEF WEB (SWITZERLAND)

 

Source: Government of France

Date: 14 Dec 2005

 

(Paris, 14 décembre) - The Contact Group met Tuesday 13 December, in Paris, at the level of political directors, with the participation of representatives from the Council of the European Union Secretariat, the European Commission and NATO. Mr Martti Ahtisaari, UN SG Special Envoy in charge of the negotiations on the future status of Kosovo attended the meeting as well as Mr Hedi Annabi, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, and Mr Jessen-Petersen, the Head of UNMIK.

 

Mr Ahtisaari informed the Contact Group of the meetings he had in Belgrade and Pristina, as well as in Skopje, Tirana and Podgorica. During the discussions which followed, the Contact Group emphasized unanimously its total support for the Special Envoy. The participants agreed that the negotiations should be carried out in a realistic way, and without prejudging its outcome. It was up to each of the Parties to act constructively and the negotiations needed to be accompanied by the achievement of new progress on standards. The importance of the Guiding Principles, adopted by the Contact Group and endorsed by the UN Security Council, was recalled.

 

It was decided to maintain close coordination between the negotiating team led by Mr Ahtisaari and the Contact Group, including at ministerial level.

 

The French political director took this opportunity to report on French Foreign Minister Douste-Blazy's visit to Belgrade and Pristina on December 9 and 10, during which he called on all of the persons he met with to be realistic in upcoming negotiations.

Hague tribunal ignored evidence against Kosovo commander - Serbian judge

BBCM, December 13, 2005, Tuesday

 

Text of report by Kosovo Serb radio Kontakt Plus on 13 December

 

[Announcer] Material evidence suggesting the guilt of the former Kosovo Liberation Army [UCK in Albanian; OVK in Serbian] commander for Klecka, Fatmir Limaj - evidence of giving orders and murdering Serb civilians - was submitted to the Hague tribunal, an investigative magistrate in the Pristina County Court, Danica Marinkovic, today said in Kosovska Mitrovica. However, she added, this evidence had not been used in the proceedings [against Limaj], which resulted in his acquittal two weeks ago.

 

In an interview with the investigative magistrate on 6 August 1998, members of the OVK, the brothers Bekim and Luan Mazreku, gave all the details about crimes against the civilian population in Klecka where Fatmir Limaj was the commander of OVK headquarters in this place, Judge Marinkovic said.

 

She added that they [the two brothers] had also told her what had taken place in Malisevo, after they had become members of the OVK and had put on uniforms and taken up arms. They said that they had carried out orders given by Commander Fatmir Limaj.

 

Luan Mazreku said that he guarded Lapusnik prison at the time, of which Limaj was also in charge.

 

[Marinkovic] Photocopies of all the evidence were submitted to the prosecution in The Hague and the tribunal in The Hague, all translated into English. I have been summoned by the Hague investigators to testify about events in Kosmet [Kosovo-Metohija] on a number of occasions. However, they exclusively wanted me to testify about Racak [village where large number of Albanians were killed in early 1999], and were in no mood to hear my story about what was happening in Klecka and how many civilians died there - they did not want to hear that those crimes could have been committed by Fatmir Limaj.

 

[Announcer] The Mazreku brothers gave all the details about the Serb civilians abducted from Orahovac, including women and children. All of them were transferred to Malisevo, and then to Klecka village, where Kosovo Liberation Army headquarters was located, under the command of Fatmir Limaj - who gave orders to abuse the civilians and then execute them, Judge Marinkovic reported parts of the Mazreku brothers' testimony.

 

[Marinkovic] They [Mazreku brothers] testified that ten civilians had been executed, including three women who were picked from that first row [as heard]. They saw that they [the women] had been raped, those three women. As to the scale of these incidents, and what else was happening there, we can only guess, given that we found a large number of human bones at the scene - I cannot tell their number - some of them were burnt, some had already turned to ashes, and some were still burning.

 

I could never forget a child's hand, like this, the way it was burning and the smell of the burning flesh, I could never erase this from my memory - it was so sad. God forbid that it should ever happen again.

 

[Announcer] Criminal proceedings against Bekim and Luan Mazreku are still in progress and these are the responsibility of the court in Nis. In 2000, they were sentenced to 20 years in prison at Pristina County Court. Following the appeal of the defence lawyers, the Supreme Court of Serbia annulled the case and ordered a repeated trial. On 26 March 2002, the Mazreku brothers were transferred to Kosmet, along with other ethnic Albanian inmates then detained in Serbian prisons and they are currently unavailable to our authorities, Judge Marinkovic said.

 

Source: Kontakt Plus, Kosovska Mitrovica, in Serbian 1500 gmt 13 Dec 05  

Fatmir Limaj addresses Kosovo Assembly

OSCE Mission in Kosovo Media Monitor, 16 December 2005

 

LIMAJ ADDRESSES KOSOVO ASSEMBLY (Most dailies)

 

Most dailies report that Fatmir Limaj, the former PDK chief of caucus, who was declared innocent by The Hague Tribunal recently and free of all charges in a trial long almost three years, called on all Kosovo MPs in Kosovo Assembly and on all politicians to be united and leave the political differences aside, at the time when the definition of Kosovo status ha started.

 

"I am especially honored that two weeks before I came here, the parliamentary groups of this Assembly reached an agreement, and unity through which they reached the resolution of three years ago. I congratulate you on this resolution, which will be important on the talks on Kosovo status," said Limaj.

 

"Kosovo needs close cooperation and we as citizens, as a political class should support Kosovo Delegation, elected by this Assembly, a delegation that represents the votes of Kosovo citizens in the negotiations," said Limaj.

 

Limaj called on Kosovo institutions to participate and help in what he called "a battle for justice." "We should not be afraid to tell Kosovo citizens that Kosovo cannot be happy if citizens of other ethnicities feel unsafe, ignored, suppressed, as a result of majority. Nobody has more reasons to understand this more than the Albanian majority, which knows very well what it went through ten years ago," said Limaj.

 

He was welcomed by all MPs. His speech was followed with a long applause. Kosovo MPs said that they were convinced in Limaj's innocence.

 

-----

 

UNMIK Media Monitoring, 16 December 2005

 

Fatmir Limaj addresses Kosovo Assembly members (dailies)

 

All dailies cover the speech that former PDK Parliamentary Group chief Fatmir Limaj gave before members of the Kosovo Assembly. Koha Ditore highlights that Limaj has asked for support for the Negotiations Team. "The position of Kosovo and the delegation of Kosovo can only be strong if all of us engage on the ground by working to create democratic values, which are not for the international community but for our own citizens," Limaj said.

 

In a full page article on Limaj's address, Zëri quotes him as saying, "Let us be united for the independence of Kosovo. I am convinced that the Assembly will have the honour or the responsibility to very soon declare or accept the international recognition of the independent and sovereign state of Kosovo," he added.

ICTY appeals chamber stays the Haradinaj decision

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR EX-YUGOSLAVIA

 

APPEALS CHAMBER STAYS THE HARADINAJ DECISION

 

Press Release

 

(Exclusively for the use of the media. Not an official document)

 

The Hague, 16 December 2005

 

OK/MOW/1039e

 

The Tribunal's Appeals Chamber today ruled to stay the Trial Chamber's decision rendered on 12 October 2005 which would have allowed Ramush Haradinaj "to appear in public and engage in public political activities".

 

This means that the conditions laid out in the Decision for Provisional Release of Ramush Haradinaj will apply until the Appeals Chamber has rendered its final decision on the matter which will not be issued by 21 December 2005. These conditions include but are not limited to the following:

 

"[...]The Accused shall reside and remain within the territory of Kosovo throughout the period of his provisional release, more specifically, at Pristina/Prishtinë or at Glodjane/Gllogjan[...]"

 

"[...]the Accused will not be allowed to make any public appearance or in any way get involved in any public political activity. The Accused will however be allowed to take up administrative or organisational activities in his capacity of President of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, provided such activities do not conflict with any of the conditions set out in this decision. [...]"

Orahovac: 500 meters for 500 souls

KiM Info Newsletter 17-12-05

ORAHOVAC, ONE OF THE SMALLEST SERB ENCLAVES IN KOSOVO AND METOHIJA

The former small town with its own municipal assembly, court and secondary school has become a barbed wire-enclosed concentration camp for Serbs

Politika daily, Belgrade, December 14, 2005
 
Frequent Albanian attacks after the deployment of NATO troops in Kosovo and Metohija forced Momirka Mojsic to change her place of residence for the first time in 80 years. From her native Orahovac she went, like many others, to Serbia. She settled with her two sons in Obrenovac. But not for long. There was no work, living conditions were difficult, and their heart remained in Kosovo. They did not think about it too long. They returned to Orahovac to their dilapidated house in one of four streets in town where Serbs still live today.

"We're accustomed to live here. We returned to our own house and we will accept whatever God has prepared for us," said Grandmother Momirka.

She is one of 500 residents determined to stay in her home despite the hostile Albanian environment. Located between Djakovica, Decane, Prizren and Pec, Orahovac is one of the smallest Serb enclaves. The former small town with its own municipal assembly, court and secondary school has become a barbed wire-enclosed concentration camp for Serbs. Their freedom of movement is limited to a circumference of 500 meters. In order to go outside this they need an armed escort. Twice a week they have organized transportation to Mitrovica, and twice a month to Gracanica. Even the ambulance cannot pass here without a KFOR escort.

The Albanians, on the other hand, are free to move around, including in the few hundred Serb-inhabited meters. Frequently they provoke and threaten. The KFOR troops (Swiss, German and Austrian contingents are stationed here) have their hands full. The Serbs do not complain about them. They say they are well with them for now. Their headquarters is located in the "main" square in front of the church. Many Serbs who fled from here have rented their houses to the police, and KFOR and UNMIK administration.

Among the few buildings still remaining to the Serbs is the church of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos. Today they come to this church to pray - and to bury their dead. The Albanians have usurped the old cemetery and so the churchyard is already full of new mounds. Because of the proximity of the graves, the church's foundations, built in the mid-18th century, have been dug out. Presently the church is being renewed with donations from the parishioners. Guarded in it as a holy relic is an icon of the Most Holy Theotokos said to be wonder-working, as well as a 500 year-old icon of Jesus Christ. The church in Orahovac is also unique in that it is probably the only Orthodox church in Serbia with a choir comprised exclusively of children.

"It's enough for just one child to come for me to be able to serve liturgy," said Priest Srdjan Milenkovic.

Even here, in the ghetto, children are born. This year there were four but Father Srdjan has baptized one. He would baptize the others, too, but the godparents are afraid to come here, he said. "As long as children are being born, we will survive here," he said optimistically. Once a year an occasional young couple marries in the church. Perhaps there would be more weddings but there is a shortage of young women, joked Grandmother Momirka. "No girl from Serbia wants to live here."

Nonetheless, this year there are 12 students attending the first grade of the Vuk Karadzic Primary School. That's three times more than last year. The school has a total enrollment of 50, while the secondary school, located in the same building, has 40 students.

They are most active during their computer class. They received three computers and a one-year Internet subscription from the National Office. Equally important is that they have a generator now so they can work on the computers when there is no electricity. Recently the power outages have been increasingly frequent. The adults are fearful because they have heard that soon they will have to begin paying electricity bills. They don't know how they will manage when they can barely make ends meet without this further expense.

Recently the Coordinating Center sent them some wood for heating. A young Albanian saw it as his opportunity to make some money. Eighteen year-old Gzim Cena uses his small motor trailer to deliver wood to his Serb neighbors. He charges two euros per cubic meter. He says he can make 20-30 euros per day. He claims he has no problems as a result of his enterprise with either his compatriots or with the Serbs. He is not bothering anyone; the important thing is for the job to be completed.

After all, the older residents of Orahovac say that once their life here in Metohija was humble but harmonious with the Albanians. They visited each other's homes. But the times have changed. Seventy-five Serbs from Orahovac have been kidnapped and few believe things will ever be like they were before.

Nevertheless, today in Orahovac they still sing the traditional song, "Native land, rose of May, Orahovac, garden of heaven".
 
Written by Jelena Cerovina

Feast of St. Joanikije of Devic celebrated in Devic Monastery

KiM Info Newsletter 16-12-05

KIM Info Service, Devic, December 15, 2005

On Thursday Devic Monastery festively celebrated the feast of its patron saint and protector, St. Joanikije of Devic. His Grace Bishop Artemije of Raska-Prizren and Kosovo-Metohija served Holy Hierarchal Liturgy with the concelebration of a number of hieromonks and priests of the Diocese of Raska and Prizren. Despite the difficult security conditions around the monastery some 300 souls gathered to celebrate the feast of St. Joanikije the Wonder-worker, who founded the monastery, with the monastery's sisterhood.

The sisters of Devic Monastery, led by Abbess Anastasije, are investing great efforts to maintain the continuity of spiritual life in this holy shrine, which was completely destroyed during last year's March riots. The nuns now live in newly rebuilt living quarters while the church has been only partially renewed and awaits further restoration work on the frescoes damaged by torching. There are also plans to restore the rest of the buildings completely destroyed in March 2004.

Explosive device found on road leading to Banjska Monastery

KiM Info Newsletter 16-12-05

 

Banjska Monastery, December 15, 2005

 

An explosive device was found on Thursday at 12:45 p.m. on the off-ramp from the main road from Kosovska Mitrovica to Leposavic leading to Banjska Monastery. Members of the Kosovo Police Service and KFOR have blocked off the road to the monastery and the highway itself. The road was re-opened at 6:00 p.m. after the device was deactivated. There was an increased KFOR and police presence in the area.

NATO-led peacekeepers detonate WWII artillery shell in Kosovo

Associated Press, Dec 16, 2005 4:19 AM

 

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo detonated an artillery shell left over from the World War II, police said Friday.

 

The shell, a 105mm Howitzer, was located close to a railway bridge in the northern part of the province, U.N. police spokesman Larry Miller said.

 

No one was injured and no damage was caused by Thursday's detonation, Miller said.

 

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations and NATO-led peacekeepers since mid-1999, following a NATO air war aimed at stopping Serbia's crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

Kosovo Turks: Those Who Live in the Most Critical Region of Balkans

AXIS INFORMATION AND ANALYSIS, 15.12.2005 by Can Karpat, AIA Turkish and Balkan Section

 

Some 92 years ago, they were the predominant nation in Kosovo. Now they struggle so that the United Nations Mission in Kosovo recognises their language as official. Who are those Turks, who live in the most critical region of the Balkans? Will the most pacific minority during the Kosovo crisis have its word to say in the Balkans where only violence resolves the problems? AIA brings a reference file on Kosovo Turks.

 

Kosovo Turks in history

 

Turkish existence in Yugoslavian territories goes back as early as to the 5th century with immigrations of Avar, Pecenek, Oghuz and Kuman tribes. Systematic settlement began however after the Ottoman conquest during the 14th century.

 

In 1389, Ottomans defeated Serbians and conquered Kosovo. Turks started to settle down in the region according to the Ottoman traditions. After the Russo-Turkish war in 1877-78, the domination of Ottomans in the region was attenuated, and gradually Turks became a minority. In 1913, Kosovo was integrated into Serbia. Since then and still legally Kosovo is a part of Serbia-Montenegro.

 

Although the Ottoman heritage is still alive in the region, the official number of Turks is lower than one would expect: 15 to 20 thousand people. However in Kosovo, individual declarations of national identity depend on the political conditions of the period of time when official censuses are made.

 

When the census of 1948 is compared to that of 1953, it is seen that in the first census, the figure of Kosovo Turks is as low as 1300, whereas in the second one, this figure suddenly reaches 35.000. By 1948 the beginning of the Cold War, Turks of Kosovo were "suspects" for the Yugoslavian communist administration. Therefore Turks preferred to be registered as Albanians. In 1953 however as relations between Yugoslavia and Turkey were softened, relations between Yugoslavia and Albania were tense more than ever. This time Albanians were suspect. So Turks made themselves registered as Turks in order to obtain the permission of immigration to Turkey. In 1991, Turks suffered from Albanian assimilation pressures. During the census, 12 Turkish census officials had to resign under Albanian pressure. The result of that census showed the figure of Turks diminished to 12.000. In 2000, the census organised by the OSCE (Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe) was boycotted by Turks, who demanded the recognition of their mother language as one of the official languages of Kosovo - a privilege that was granted to them once with the Yugoslavian Constitution of 1974, though suppressed by Milosevic in 1989. Finally, the OSCE statistics estimated the figure of Turks between 15 and 20 thousand.

 

Although it is not possible to give any figure with solid evidences, many sources estimate the figure of Turks living in Kosovo between 50 and 80 thousand people. In any case, the figure of Kosovo Turks must be much higher than it appears in official censuses.

 

Turkish minority of Kosovo live mainly in Prizren, Sandzak, Mamusha, Gnjilane, Pristina, Mitrovica and Djakovica.

 

Between 1389 and 1913, Turks, being members of the predominant nation, lived peacefully in Kosovo. After 1912 however they had to endure many assimilation measures first from Serbians, and then from Albanians.

 

Serbia, which obtained its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 with the Berlin Treaty, began to "slav-ise" its new territories, including Kosovo after 1913. The "slavisation" meant to force by every possible means those, who qualified themselves as "Ottoman", "Turk" or "Muslim" to immigrate into the frontiers of the retreating Ottoman Empire. During and after the Balkan Wars, there was a mass exodus to the imperial capital, which for a long time did not know how to help them. Before those wars, there were 2 million 315 thousand Turks in the Balkans. By 1913, only 1 million 682 thousand of them took refuge in Istanbul. As to what happened to those 633.000 no one ever asked. Statistics do not tell much but no doubt that Kosovo was one of the most suffered regions at that time.

 

During the 1930's, the lands of Turks were forcibly confiscated in the name of the land nationalisation reform. Between 1923, when the Republic of Turkey was established, and 1939, 120.000 Turks emigrated from Yugoslavia to the new Turkish State.

 

It is known that Kosovo Turks participated in Tito's resistance groups and fought against Nazis during the Second World War. After 1945, Turks were not permitted to leave the communist Yugoslavian Federation for fear that the West might consider that immigration as flight from communism. Between 1956 and 1960, Turks suffered from severe pressures under the campaign for the collection of arms. Consequently, between 1954 and 1968, 175.000 people immigrated to Turkey.

 

Between 1968 and 1991, Turks were subject to the applications of assimilation by the Albanians. Especially with the recognition of the autonomous status of Kosovo in 1974, Kosovo's Muslim Albanians started assimilating every other Muslim ethnicity in the region (Turks, Muslim Gypsies, Pomaks and Bosnians). For instance, they encouraged Turks to boycott Serbian schools. Those Turks, who did not follow that boycott, were called "Milos", and some of them even suffered from physical violence. Ironically, in 1989 when Milosevic suppressed the autonomy of Kosovo, Turks were released from that Albanian pressure.

 

Turks and Serbs have a history of conflict dating back to the 14th century. This historical antagonism and the unity of faith of these Turks with Kosovo Albanians made out of Turks strong supporters of the NATO during the 1990's. Turkey welcomed refugees fleeing the crisis, and agreed to take as many as 20.000 of them. After the war, they returned to their homes.

 

Turks in Kosovo's political and social life

 

Politics

 

Despite all, Turks were able to survive and to preserve Turkish culture in Kosovo. Particularly Turks, who constitute a majority in Pristina and Dragas (city in south of Kosovo, near Gora region) continue their struggles to invigorate Turkish identity through cultural societies and political parties against Serbians and Albanians.

 

As the negotiations for the final status of Kosovo, it seems that Kosovo Turks have not made their mind yet. Some of them are for an independent Kosovo. Others paradoxically sympathise with Serbians for fear that Albanians, being the predominant ethnicity, would start another vague of violent assimilation, which may be ended with forced immigration.

 

It cannot be said that Turks within Yugoslavian territories in general are organised the way they should be. Other minorities in Yugoslavia like Greeks, Armenians and Jews, which are lower than 3000 people, represent a more solid unity and lead political activities proportional to their population. However it must be remembered that the secession of Macedonia from Yugoslavia destroyed the unity of Turkish minority in the region, and put Kosovo Turks in a difficult position.

 

There are three Turkish political parties in Kosovo:

 

Turkish Public Front under the leadership of Sezai Saipi

Turkish Democratic Union under the leadership of Erhan Köroglu, centred in Pristina

Kosovo Turkish Democratic Party (KTDP) under the leadership of Mahir Yagcilar, centred in Prizren (the only registered Turkish party of Kosovo)

 

Turkish Public Front is pro-Albanian, and accuses the other two parties of "servility to Serbians". The Party opposes that Turks attend Turkish schools.

 

KTDP used to wish for a solution of the Kosovo issue, which would not harm the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. However, since the violent events of March 2004, the KTDP President,

 

Mahir Yagcilar claims that a coexistence of Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo is impossible: "Serbian thesis and Albanian thesis are completely opposite. It is impossible that they live together". Yagcilar, who does not believe that Kosovo can be a part of Serbia anymore, proposes a special status for Kosovo, through which Kosovo will be integrated into the European Union.

 

Activities of Turkish Democratic Union and KTDP mainly consist in the maintenance of Turkish culture and education. Especially the foundation of KTDP in July 1990 appeased anxieties of the Turkish minority in the region, for during the one-party-system in Yugoslavia, minority rights were protected by the Communist Party. Closing of Turkish schools and discriminations against Turks had an end. Thus KTDP contributes to the preserving of the Turkish identity in Kosovo.

 

In the parliamentary elections on the 17th of November, 2001, KTDP, with 1 per cent of the popular vote, obtained 4 seats out of 120 seats in the Assembly (Kuvendi). In the parliamentary elections of the 23rd of October, 2004, KTDP raised up its vote percentage to 1.2, though obtained only 3 seats. Kosovo Assembly has a particularity. Along with 100 seats elected through proportional representation, there are 20 set-aside seats representing national minorities: 10 for Serbs, 4 for Romas, Ashkalis and Egyptians, 3 for Bosnians, 2 for Turks and 1 for Gorancis. Thus in 2001 and 2004 Turks were represented in the Assembly respectively with 6 and 5 seats.

 

KTDP also obtained the Ministry of Health and one minister deputyship in current government of Kosovo. And by the 27th of September, 2005, Mamusha (near to Prizren) municipality is administrated by Turks.

 

There are also two cultural and artistic Turkish associations in Kosovo: Right Way (Dogru Yol) and Truth (Gercek). The purpose of these two associations is to keep the Turkish culture alive in Kosovo.

 

Medias

 

The main newspaper of Kosovo Turks was weekly Dawn (Tan), published under State control from 1969 until the end of the Kosovo conflict (1998-99).

 

Before 1969, Kosovo Turks had no independent Turkish press. Another Turkish newspaper, the famous Unity (Birlik), published in Skopje by Macedonia Turks since 1944, also dealt with Kosovo Turks. After 1999, the first independent Turkish newspaper appeared: New Period (Yeni Dönem). Other important Turkish newspapers are:

 

Our Voice (Sesimiz), the official newspaper of KTDP

Your Environment (Cevren) since 1973

Avalanche (Cig)

Bird (Kus) since 1974

Pearl (Inci)

 

Radio broadcasting in Turkish started as early as in 1951. As to television broadcasting in Turkish, it started by 1974. By civil initiative, Kosovo Radio-Television agreed to broadcast 5-minutes-long news and another 40-minutes-long program in weekends in Turkish. Along with Kosovo Radio, which transmitted 2-hours-long programs in Turkish, another two Turkish radios were founded: New Period Radio in Prizren and Kent FM Radio in Pristina. Since the 1st of February, 2003, the New Period Radio broadcasts in four languages: 21 hours in Turkish, 3 hours in Albanian, Bosnian and Roman. This is the first radio, which broadcasts in four languages in Kosovo.

 

Language

 

The Yugoslavian Constitution of 1974 recognised Turkish as the official language everywhere Turks were majority. In 1989, Milosevic suppressed the status of Turkish as the third official language of the Federation.

 

Nowadays, Kosovo Turks are fighting to take back this right. However neither the OSCE nor the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) seem to take this demand into account. According to the European Council, the language of a minority can be recognised as official if this minority represents a substantial percentage of some ethnic community. However, Turkey gives full support to Kosovo Turks in this matter and accepts no concession. When Bernard Kouchner, former head of the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) proposed the recognition of the Turkish language in regions where one of the elected local officials is a Turk, the proposition was categorically rejected by Ankara.

 

The owner of the Kosovan Turkish newspaper, Yeni Dönem and the New Period Radio, Mehmet Bütüc uttered his anxiety: "The Constitution of 1974 declared that Turkish be the official language in regions where Turks are majority.

 

That formality depended on the Constitution. There is still such a formality but instead of the Constitution it depends on municipal regulations. This is a disadvantage for Turkish population. For instance, Prizren municipality accepts Turkish as official language. However if someday a conservative Albanian wins the municipal elections, he would suppress this status of the Turkish language. Our main struggle is to regain the constitutional guarantee".

 

As to the President of KTDP, Mahir Yagcilar declared that as Kosovo Turks, they do not consider themselves as minority. Yagcilar emphasised that the Yugoslavian Constitution of 1974 recognised Turkish minority as one of the three founder ethnic communities of Kosovo, and accused the UNMIK: "All of negative measures against us were undertaken by this institution. This is the same UNMIK, which removed Turkish from official languages as soon as they settled in Kosovo". It is significant that UNMIK periodicals like UNMIK News and UNMIK Chronicles give no information at all about Turkish minority in Kosovo.

 

However, it seems that first of all Kosovo Turks should prove their exact number in order to impose their demands on international platform.

 

Education

 

After 1913, Serbia banned the Turkish education in Kosovo except some religious schools in Pristina and Prizren. By 1943, Turkish education completely disappeared from Kosovo. The judicial existence of the Turkish minority in Kosovo was recognised as late as in 1951. In fact, after the foundation of the Yugoslavian Federation in 1945, every minority obtained the right of education in their own language. However, Turks, who had to study in Serbian in schools until 1945, after that year were forced to study in Albanian. The right of education in Turkish was granted to the Turkish minority with a delay of six years. By the 5th of September, 1951 only Turks had the right to build their own schools where they are majority.

 

Today Kosovo Turks have their own schools in every educative level. In Prizren, Mamusha, Pristina, Gnjilane, Djakovica and Vucitrin, there are 3 kindergartens, 11 primary schools, 6 colleges and the Pristina University where on the whole 2532 Turkish students attend lectures. After the Kosovo conflict in 1998-99, the Kosovo Turkish Battalion Task Force Commandership located in Prizren and founded a kindergarten ("Mehmetcik" after the symbolic name of Turkish soldiers) in 2001. In this kindergarten, there are two classes that educate children in Turkish.

 

Religion

 

For Balkan Muslims in general, more than ethnic identity, religious identity is the main determinant element. Balkan Muslims learnt Islam through Bektasi Sufi dervishes and other orders' priests coming from Anatolia. That is why they are bound still today with Sufi orders. Especially in Kosovo, there are dervish lodges (tekke) of all of religious orders (mainly those of Bektasi order) in every city. Rafai Lodge in Prizren welcomes every Thursday many Albanians, Turks, Bosnians and Goranis for rites. Entering the lodge, everyone leaves their national identity behind and behaves according to their Muslim identity only.

 

Turkey-Kosovo relations

 

Former Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hikmet Cetin remembered an interesting moment during one meeting about Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992: "Turkey was also invited (to the meeting). Milosevic, Karadzic were all there. Beside me, the American Secretary for Foreign Affairs [Lawrence Sidney Eagleburger] was sitting. He had been Ambassador to Yugoslavia for seven years. He turned to me, and said, How come you succeeded to remain in these terrible territories for 500 years?" [Zaman newspaper, 22.9.1994] This "success" can be explained by "pax ottomana". It must be emphasised that "pax" means here political and ethnic stability. Except some turbulent periods, the Ottoman Empire managed to provide to the Balkans a supra-identity, namely the Ottoman identity, which was hard to demolish even after the rise of the nationalism during the 19th century.

 

During the Ottoman reign, thousands of Bosnians, Albanians, Pomaks and Roma Gypsies were converted to Islam by their free will. They accepted Islam in order to be integrated into the predominant nation, Turks, and also to have the Ottoman protection against Christian Serbians and Bulgarians. These Balkan Muslims ethnically are not Turks. They speak the same languages as Serbians and Bulgarians. However they feel themselves closer to Turks than to their Slav kinsmen because of their religion. Moreover throughout history and still today, Serbians diffuse the image of a monolithic Muslim community whereas they demolish the unity of Orthodox Christianity in the Balkans in the name of nationalist ideals. Turk, Pomak (a Muslim Bulgarian), Bosnian (a Slav Muslim) or Goranci (a Slav Muslim connected to Pomaks and Torbs of Macedonia), for Serbians they are all "Turks", for they are all Muslims.

 

Therefore, today Turkey is not only responsible for a couple of millions of Balkan Turks, but also for almost 10 millions of Balkan Muslims whatever their ethnic origin may be. This is the historical responsibility of Turkey.

 

The psychological affection of Balkan Muslims towards Turkey is still alive. Kosovo Roma Gypsies still protect the banner (sancak) confined to them by the Ottoman Sultan as a reward of their loyalty and courage in war times.

 

During demonstrations in Belgrade in 1997, some carried banners with slogans like "Where are the days under Ottoman reign" on them. The intense affection showed to the Kosovo Turkish Battalion Task Force surprised foreign observers and journalists at that time. Every official visit from Turkey provokes great enthusiasm in Kosovo. For many Muslim Albanians, Turkish is a second language. Ottoman marks are imprinted on their wedding feasts and other festivities. Ironically, they remain more loyal to the Ottoman memory than Turkey itself. Prizren has every quality to be a perfect model for an Ottoman city.

 

Kosovo Turks take great care to hold their political and economic relations with Turkey at the highest, and follow every evolution in Turkey. Especially Prizren has intense commercial and social relations with Turkey. Almost every family member has a relative in Turkey. So far Turkey participated in KFOR, UNMIK and OSCE missions with soldiers, police agents and specialists in order to contribute to the security and stability in Kosovo. Turkish troops not only perform security missions, but humanitarian missions as well, including building schools and roads, restoring historical buildings, healthcare and social work. The Turkish presence in Kosovo is very visible.

 

Turkey does not change its Kosovo policy. During his Pristina and Belgrade visits in October 2005, Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Gül stated: "Kosovo cannot turn to the period before the NATO intervention in 1999. Kosovo can be neither divided nor annexed to neighbouring countries. Except these, all other options will be saluted". Serbia claims that thus Turkey does not support the independence of Kosovo. However Turkey's position is more complicated than that.

 

Turkey worries that the independence of Kosovo would be a precedent for the solution of its own internal problems. Moreover, Turkey, which focuses on the European Union membership, does not want to clash with the Slav-Orthodox bloc in the Balkans.

 

However Turkey, on its own soil, has a considerable Kosovo Albanian population, who has several solidarity associations in Istanbul:

 

Kosovans Solidarity Association (Shoqata e Kosovarëve)

Pristina Culture and Solidarity Association (Shoqata e Pristinasve)

Prizren Solidarity and Culture Association (Shoqata e Prizrenasve)

Kosovo Gnjilane Association (Shoqata e Gjilanasve)

 

In Turkey, the number of people with Balkan origins is estimated over one million. Some of these people have relatives in Kosovo and elsewhere.

 

Therefore Turkey should consider its responsibility over the Balkans beyond its self interests. The rather passive attitude of Turkey over Kosovo issue is criticised in Turkey as well.

 

According to the deputy president of the Turkish National Security Strategies Research Centre (TUSAM), Ali Külebi Turkey should adopt a "multi-dimensional foreign policy". In this regard, Turkey should take benefit from its potential influence over the Balkans as well.

 

To start, Turkey may subsidise more Turkish education and cultural activities in Kosovo. Kosovo Turks lack many educative materials in Turkish.

 

They demand the increase of the quota for students, who will attend lectures in Turkey, and also the equivalence of diplomas received in Turkey. Ankara may intervene with the UNMIK administration in the name of these Turks, who live in the most critical region of the Balkans.

International Abandonment of the Roma in Former Yugoslavia

DZENO ASSOCIATION (CZECH REPUBLIC), 14.12. 2005

 

Do not even bother to ignore this. This typically Austrian expression, meaning that an issue should be given the lowest possible attention, could very well summarise the 'international community's' attitude towards the fate and destiny of the Kosovo Roma. Provided the so-called standards are fulfilled, discussions over the final status of the UN-administrated province may well begin by the mid of this year. These standards refer to a set of conditions encompassing almost any area of social life such as the freedom of media or the implementation of free market reforms.

 

They also involve the fulfilment of the rights of the minorities including the right to return in safety which is generally seen as the litmus test for the degree of preparation of the Kosovo society or better, of the Albanian-speaking majority, to take in hand the future of the province.

 

But today, more than five years after the end of the war, there seems to be an ever greater latitude in the way how this condition is set out. This is particularly true as regards to the non-Serb minorities and in particular the Roma and other groups decried as "gypsies" and persecuted as such. Eventually, one may talk about a simple omission. The reality however is that this is the result of a crude Realpolitik which does not count those who do not have a voice to speak for themselves.

 

Kosovo was once regarded as an example of successful integration of Roma. Kosovo Roma had achieved a notable degree of welfare. Educational achievements were comparatively high. With this went their social recognition as fully-fledged members of the society. Of this, which, if related, sometimes appears as the vision of a Roma paradise, nothing is left today. Most symbolic is the destruction of the Roma Mahala in Southern Mitrovica which once hosted one of the biggest Roma communities in the region.

 

Since there is no exact information about the number of the Roma, who once lived in the Kosovo - the 1991 census registered 44,307 people who declared themselves as being of Romani origin with NGO estimates varying between 60,000 and 200,000 people - it is very difficult to quantify the human misery which has emerged from reversed ethnic cleansing. On the spot, exact figures are not needed, as the reality speaks for itself: Kosovo Roma are today the last inhabitants of the refugee camps in the Former Yugoslavia. Several tens of thousands live in illegal settlements, with often no or only limited access to water, electricity and waste removal. Their livelihood is made out of donations, occasional jobs in the informal economy, from begging and from selling of findings from the garbage.

 

Kosovo Roma today are reproducing the stereotypes of what people commonly consider as 'gypsies', a Roma activist pointed out to me. It is indeed hard to ignore the reverse process which has taken place, pushing once integrated and economically independent people to the fringes of the society, a society which has itself reached the bottom of what can be reached by European standards. Last Summer, I visited refugee camps or collective centres as they are euphemistically called in Montenegro and spoke to their inhabitants. I spoke to those who are rummaging through garbage cans and who are begging in the streets. The most enduring impression I was left with from my visits is the ability of these people to preserve their human dignity in the face of their hardships.

 

They were quite outspoken about the fact that they do not have any illusion about ever returning to Kosovo. Their dream is to go to Western Europe to have a better life. If the camps have emptied throughout the years it is probably in first place because of those hundreds or thousands who have somehow managed to make their way to Western Europe. In Summer 1999, a boat sunk while crossing the Adriatic leaving more than hundred dead. "I have lost a daughter-in-law and a grandchild," a man told me in the Northern Montenegrin town of Berane.

 

The camps and settlements are also the place where those end up, for whom the dream of a more bearable life has ended in failure and who have been repatriated from Western Europe. Again there are no precise numbers of the Roma who have been repatriated from Western Europe to Serbia and Montenegro and West European states such as Germany insist that they do not repatriate Kosovo Roma to other regions of Serbia and Montenegro. However, there are recurring rumours that Roma from Kosovo are being sent back to Serbia and Montenegro. I met two Kosovo Roma families, who had been repatriated from Germany and Switzerland, in the Podgorica suburb camp of Konik in Montenegro. One returnee from Germany explained to me that he had actually hoped to return to Kosovo. This was in 1999, before the bombing.

 

The return process to Kosovo has proceeded sluggishly. By the end of 2003, the UNHCR had registered merely 10,000 so-called minority returns. The process has considerably slowed down after the March pogroms in 2004 which led to 4,100 new IDPs with the number of returns in 2004 being significantly inferior to that of the two years before. On the top of it, several hundreds of people have reportedly left Kosovo for Serbia and Montenegro or other destinations in the immediate aftermath the unrests and in the months to follow.

 

Listening to the recent statements made by such influential voices as the International Crisis Group (ICG), the independence of Kosovo is merely a question of time. While the first reactions to the March pogroms seemed to be that the protection of the rights of the minorities also as a prerequisite for any discussions surrounding the status would be given greater attention, the foot seems to be today in the other shoe. It has indeed argued that the local authorities cannot be hold accountable for the security situation of the minorities as long as their political responsibilities are curtailed. Moreover, the ICG and others have warned that the frustrations of the Kosovo Albanian population over the current stalemate could trigger new violence. Independence now or barbarity, this is how the equation is now put. At the same time the advocators of independence, be it conditional, strongly rebuke any proposal by the Serbian government for a partition of Kosovo according to which Kosovo's Northern parts where the majority of the Kosovo Serbs live according to the government which has been contested by the ICG as well as by the European Stability Initiative would enjoy a substantial autonomy. Interestingly they use the same arguments to refute the Serbian governments proposal, i.e., the wish not to support an ethnic division of the province, which are put forward to legitimate an independent status of Kosovo. If it is certainly true that it cannot be expected that the Kosovo Albanians return under the authority of Belgrade, it is also true that nobody can "honestly imagine the non-Albanians integrating into an independent Kosovo any time soon" as Transitions Online (TOL) put in a rhetoric question.

 

The question that emerges here is what will happen with the Kosovo minorities. This has been raised with regard to the Kosovo Serbs and everybody agrees that their rights need to be protected, but the proponents of independence fail to consider the situation of the other ethnic minorities and in particular of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptians. One is even tempted to believe that the Serb minority would not receive the attention it receives, if the Serbian government would not use it to underline its legitimate interests in Kosovo. As a matter of fact the Serbian government has also included the Roma and other non-Serb minorities it its proposal for a partition, but this is probably rather a tactical move. What the Roma miss is somebody who would advocate their rights for their own sake.

 

In a situation where their only chance would indeed be to speak with one voice, the Roma appear divided. In addition to the distinction in Roma, Ashkali and Kosovo Egyptian which some consider as legitimate and based on real differences such as language, origin and culture, but others as a mere betrayal of the common Romani origin, there are also differences of interests, which make it impossible for anyone to speak in the name of the whole community. A situation where four quarters or more of the concerned live in Diaspora is certainly not very conducive for a clarification and eventual settlement of the differences.

 

Under these circumstances and given the fact that the situation is already complicated enough, it is certainly very tempting to simply pass over the Roma and eventually, at a later stage, call in those who will just nod their heads in acquiescence. The result will however be an ever greater alienation of the Roma which already in past has provided the basis for instrumentalisations of all kinds. More important, a discussion over the final status of Kosovo on these premises and under the preliminaries set out above risks to entrench forever the status quo.

 

Looking at post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina could be highly instructive and indeed act as a warning: Almost ten years after the end of the war only a small number of Roma have been able to return to their place of origin, others remaining displaced within the country where they live under destitute conditions or staying abroad. Roma are not represented at the political institutions. The fact that they have not been recognised as a constituent people bans them from having access to the highest political offices including the Presidency. Only in 2003 have the Roma been returned the status of a national minority, which they had had in the Former Yugoslavia, and, on this basis, been granted some protection of their rights.

 

If the 'international community' does not want to repeat these mistakes and endorse the results of reverse ethnic cleansing it needs to include the Roma in its talks, not just as people to be protected, but indeed as legitimate and equal partners.

 

(Global Politician, Karin Wango. Dr. Karin Waringo holds a Ph.D. in Political Science. She is a freelance journalist and researcher specialising in Southeast Europe and minority issues. In the past, she served as an adviser of the European Roma Information Office in Brussels)

All Albanians should unite in one state - Xhaferi

SERBIANNA (USA), December 15, 2005 06:03 AM (10:03 GMT)

 

Unification of the Albanian territories in a single state was more than necessary to resolve the Albanian question in the Balkans and without it the regional crisis will never be resolved, says Arben Xhaferi, leader of the largest Albanian opposition party in Macedonia, the Democratic Party of Albanians.

 

Speaking in the Albanian capital Tirana at a roundtable organized by the Institute for Dialogue and Communication, Xhaferi said that Albania should be the country to demand for the unification of western Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania.

 

"The Albanian question is not fiction or romanticism. It is reality," says Xhaferi.

 

Albanian government has not yet endorsed Xhaferi's idea but are leaning toward it with the belief that another independent Albanian state should emerge from the ongoing status talks of the Serbian province of Kosovo. Officially, Albania is not commenting on whether Kosovo will join Albania once independent.

 

"I insist for a direct recognition of Kosova's independence, a democratic, independent, and peaceful Kosova, in the European Union, maintaining a permanent friendship with the United States," says Albania's Assembly Speaker, Jozefina Topalli who recently visited Kosovo capital Pristina and spoke with the President Rugova.

 

Topalli also voiced support to integrate Albania and Kosovo proposing a construction of a Durres-Pristina highway as a way to speed up the integration process.

 

Kosovo is increasingly becoming a monoethnic region as Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities are forced out either by violence or by other intimidation tactics.

 

"And Mr. President, you enjoy the support of the entire Albanian parliament, Albanian government, and all Albanians in Albania," Topalli said.

 

According to the Tirana-based Gazeta Shqiptare, Xhaferi's positions have "often raised the eyebrows of politicians and has been frequently described as an extreme solution."

 

Referring to the issue of inviolability of borders, Xhaferi says that they are a technicality designed to prevent wars and that the "right of self-determination stands above that."

 

Balkan leaders say Kosovo solution must not endanger regional stability

Associated Press, Dec 15, 2005 12:02 PM

 

SKOPJE, Macedonia-The presidents of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Serbia said Thursday that a solution for the future status of Kosovo should not destabilize the wider region.

 

"We will support any solution for Kosovo, agreed between Belgrade and Pristina (Kosovo's capital) under international mediation, which will not endanger regional stability," Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski said.

 

Kosovo, officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

U.N.-mediated talks to determine whether Kosovo will remain part of Serbia or gain independence are likely to begin in January.

 

Crvenkovski, Serbian President Boris Tadic and Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov met at the lake resort of Ohrid, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Skopje.

 

Tadic urged majority Serb areas in Kosovo to develop more links with each other, and also with Belgrade, while Parvanov said any solution had to protect all ethnic communities.

 

Kosovo's 100,000-strong Serb community lives in isolated enclaves, protected by NATO-led peacekeepers. Ethnic Albanians constitute around 90 percent of Kosovo's population of 2 million.

 

The presidents' informal two-day meeting, which ended Thursday, also discussed regional cooperation and infrastructure projects in border areas.

UN, Serbia plan direct Kosovo talks next month

RELIEF WEB (SWITZERLAND)

 

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Date: 15 Dec 2005

 

BELGRADE, Dec 15 (AFP) - The United Nations and Serbia said Thursday they were hopeful that direct talks between Belgrade and Pristina on the future status of disputed Kosovo can start next month.

 

Albert Rohan, the assistant to UN special Kosovo talks envoy Martti Ahtisaari, said the purpose of his visit to the Serbian capital was to get concrete positions ahead of the talks.

 

"The shuttle diplomacy serves the purpose to clarify matters and also to (get) the parties to put forward concrete positions, and of course they have then to lead to lead to direct talks with our facilitation," the Austrian diplomat said.

 

"We are expecting to receive now complete position papers on both sides and we shall use the Christmas season to study all these papers and then resume our activities in early January," Rohan added.

 

He was speaking to the media after meeting with Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, one of the 13-member team representing Serbia in the talks on resolving the status of Kosovo, which has been run by the United Nations since its 1998-1999 war.

 

Raskovic-Ivic, for her part, indicated the direct talks could take place in the Austrian capital Vienna, where Ahtisaari and Rohan are based.

 

"They could take place in second half of January probably in Vienna where, I think, these negotiations will generally be held," she said, adding that Belgrade favoured direct talks.

Kosovo can be 'independent' within Serbia: Serbian president

RELIEF WEB (SWITZERLAND)

 

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Date: 15 Dec 2005

 

by Katarina Subasic

 

BELGRADE, Dec 15 (AFP) - Kosovo Albanians can achieve a form of "independence" within Serbia, the former Yugoslav republic's President Boris Tadic said, clarifying his position in talks on the UN protectorate's future status.

 

In an interview with AFP, Tadic said he was ready "to recognise all the possible rights of ethnic Albanians and maximum possible independence from Belgrade, but at the same time preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia over Kosovo."

 

Albanians, who outnumber Serbs, Roma and other minorities in Kosovo by more than nine to one, are determined to secure full independence from Serbia in the province's future status negotiations -- a demand that Belgrade strongly opposes.

 

The ethnic group could have "some kind of international representatives, but no seat in the United Nations, no defence sector and no ministry of foreign affairs," Tadic said, adding an "international presence" would be needed at borders.

 

In a bid to gain support for his plan, Tadic is to present it to French President Jacques Chirac next week, making France the third member of the Contact Group of foreign powers in the Balkans after Russia and Germany to be officially informed about the idea.

 

The UN special envoy for resolving Kosovo's status, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, last month launched initial negotiations in an effort to bring Belgrade and Pristina in from their diametrically opposed positions.

 

Tadic proposed that two entities should be formed in the province, with the Serbian one "institutionally linked to Belgrade."

 

"My proposal is to form a Serbian entity which is going to be in charge of few very important fields (including), for example, health care, education, judiciary and local security," Tadic said.

 

"I'm trying to define the position of Albanian (people) in Kosovo in terms of self-government (and) de facto independent institutions, but at the same time to protect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of my country in Kosovo," he added.

 

Forces from Serbia, whose people consider Kosovo the origins of their history and culture, were driven out of the province in June 1999 after a 78-day campaign of air strikes against them by NATO in response to a crackdown against separatist Albanian rebels.

 

The province, which legally remains a part of Serbia, has since been administered and protected by the United Nations and the military alliance.

 

"Kosovo is part of our identity. Losing Kosovo would mean we are losing our identity," Tadic said.

 

However, the Serbian president warned Belgrade was likely to have more of a say about Kosovo's status if it managed to track down the two most wanted war criminals from the Balkans wars of the 1990s, ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic.

 

Karadzic and Mladic were indicted 10 years ago by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for their roles in the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslim in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II.

 

"We are cooperating with The Hague tribunal but this is not enough," Tadic said.

 

Last week's arrest of former Croatian general Ante Gotovina -- who was the court's third most wanted war crimes fugitive -- left Serbia, its union partner Montenegro and Bosnia's Serb entity in a difficult position as the only parts of former Yugoslavia yet to arrest and extradite war crime indictees.

 

"We are doing everything we can," Tadic said, adding however that "those people have a huge (amount of) experience" in avoiding arrest.

 

The ICTY's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has insisted Mladic is hiding in Serbia, but Belgrade has repeatedly denied any knowledge about his whereabouts.

 

"If he is in Serbia this is a better position, because we have more forces to find him. But if he is not in Serbia we are in trouble because everything is depending on Ratko Mladic's destiny," Tadic said.

 

"I hope that he is in Serbia, so we can find him and send him to The Hague," he added.

Kosovo Albanian arrested for al Qaeda ties

Associated Press, December 13, 2005

 

MADRID (AP) --A Spanish judge filed charges against three men suspected of financing and providing logistical support for an Algerian Islamic extremist group with suspected links to al-Qaida, court officials said Tuesday.

 

The three Algerians, among seven people arrested last week in Spain's Costa del Sol region, were charged with collaborating with an armed group and ordered them jailed, the court said.

 

An Algerian woman was released without charge. The three other suspects _ an ethnic Albanian from Kosovo, an Algerian man and a Spanish woman _ are still being questioned, officials said.

 

Authorities believe the suspects aided an Algerian-based Islamic extremist organization, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, which has declared allegiance to al-Qaida. The insurgent group has battled Algeria's government since 1992, when the military canceled legislative elections that religious parties appeared set to win.

 

On Nov. 23, Spanish police arrested 11 Algerians suspected of providing financing and logistical support to the same group. A judge later charged four of them with belonging to a terror cell but released the other seven.

Albanian Leaders Must Protect Kosovo Minorities - UN Envoy

Associated Press, December 14, 2005 07:43 ET (12:43 GMT)

 

PRISTINA - A U.N. envoy told ethnic Albanian leaders Wednesday that minority protection was essential to resolving Kosovo's disputed status.

 

Albert Rohan, who is helping U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari lead the talks, also told representatives of the Serb minority in Kosovo to participate in the province's political life, which they have boycotted for nearly two years.

 

"Status won't come automatically," Rohan told reporters, concluding his visit in Kosovo.

 

"The solution won't fall from heaven," he said. "They have to really pull up their socks and start to work."

 

Rohan urged ethnic Albanian leaders to reach out to the Serb and other minorities living here by addressing issues such as local government reform aimed at giving them more say in the areas where they live.

 

Kosovo's 100,000-strong Serb minority lives in isolated enclaves, protected by North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led peacekeepers. Their leaders have refused participation in the province's ethnic-Albanian dominated institutions since a wave of riots by ethnic Albanian mobs targeted them in 2004.

 

"We want them to have a future in Kosovo, we want to facilitate this and guarantee this, but they must also participate in shaping the future of Kosovo," Rohan said of the Serbs.

 

After the meetings in Kosovo, Rohan traveled to Serbia's capital, Belgrade.

 

Kosovo, officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, has been administered by the U.N. since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

The U.N.-mediated talks on solving Kosovo's future status are expected to formally begin in January. Negotiations are expected to be tough, with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority insisting on independence, while Serbia and the Serb minority wanting to retain at least formal control over the region.

 

Rohan said that the intention of joining the European Union one day was an essential incentive in the process of determining the future of the province, but conceded that the body "is in crisis" over the future enlargement which could eventually bring in the countries of the Balkans.

 

Bildt: Customs union between Balkans and EU

Beta News Agency, Belgrade, December 15, 2005 11:48

 

LONDON -- Thursday - Former Swedish PM Carl Bildt suggested a multilateral agreement between Balkan states and the EU that would integrate the whole region into the European customs system.

 

"Eventual EU membership is the light by which all Balkan political systems are trying to navigate. If it fades or goes out, peace efforts will be doomed throughout the region", Bildt warns in an article to newly-launched online policy journal Europe's World.

 

The former Swedish Prime Minister said there was widening recognition that the status quo in the Balkans was no longer sustainable and encouraged efforts to solve the difficult issue of Kosovo's status, but not in isolation from other outstanding issues in the region, notably the Balkans' path towards integration with the European Union.

 

He also said it was up to Belgrade and Podgorica to agree either to a functioning separation or to a functioning federation in the coming year.

 

"One possibility is to move on from the present patchwork of Stabilisation and Association Agreements - to be negotiated with Serbia, too, later this year - towards a more multilateral arrangement that could be based on making the whole region part of the EU's customs union and other associated policies", Bildt suggested.

 

Bildt said that with such a framework and policies, it ought to be possible to move the entire region towards integration into the European Union, although at different paces. "Croatia is obviously ahead, with Macedonia following, while it is equally obvious that both Kosovo and Albania have a considerable way to go until they meet the criteria. Serbia and Bosnia fall somewhere in between, but can catch up if the right policies are put in place", Bildt concluded.

European Commission pledges additional aid to Kosovo

Associated Press, Dec 15, 2005 4:55 AM

 

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-The European Commission will give an additional grant of €25 million (about US$30 million) in aid to Kosovo, officials said Thursday.

 

The amount will be used to support the province in the field of energy, institution building and a population census, the statement said.

 

The grant will be added to the EU CARDS (Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization) annual program which stood at €51.5 million (US$61.5 million) for 2005.

 

The European Union has given Kosovo about €1 billion (US$1.2 billion) over six years.

 

Kosovo, officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

The U.N.-mediated talks on solving Kosovo's future status are expected to formally begin in January. Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority insisting on independence, while Serbia and the Serb minority wanting to retain at least formal control over the region.

UN envoy holds talks with Serbian leaders on future of Kosovo

Associated Press, Dec 15, 2005 4:04 AM

 

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro-A U.N. envoy was to hold talks Thursday with Serbian leaders on the future of the disputed Kosovo province.

 

Albert Rohan, has been appointed to assist U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president, in leading the status talks between independence-seeking Kosovo Albanians and Serbia which wants the province to remain its integral part.

 

Rohan traveled to Serbia's capital Belgrade after visiting Kosovo where he told ethnic Albanian leaders Wednesday that minority protection was essential to resolving Kosovo's future status.

 

Rohan urged ethnic Albanian leaders to reach out to the Serb and other minorities living here by addressing issues such as local government reform aimed at giving them more say in the areas where they live.

 

Kosovo's 100,000-strong Serb minority lives in isolated enclaves, protected by NATO-led peacekeepers. Their leaders have refused participation in the province's ethnic-Albanian dominated institutions since a wave of riots by ethnic Albanian mobs targeted them in 2004.

 

Kosovo, officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

The U.N.-mediated talks on solving Kosovo's future status are expected to formally begin in January under Ahtisaari's auspices.

Presidents of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Serbia discuss future of Kosovo

Associated Press, Dec 14, 2005 3:13 PM

 

SKOPJE, Macedonia-The presidents of Macedonia, Bulgaria and Serbia began talks late Wednesday on the future status of Kosovo.

 

Macedonian President Branko Crvenkovski, Serbian President Boris Tadic and Bulgarian President Georgi Pervanov are at the lake resort of Ohrid, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Skopje.

 

The informal two-day meeting will also focus on regional cooperation and infrastructure projects in border areas, officials said.

 

The three presidents are expected to release a joint statement Thursday.

 

Kosovo, officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

U.N.-mediated talks to determine whether Kosovo will remain part of Serbia or gain independence are to begin in January.

UN official urges compromise to reach agreement on Kosovo

XINHUA (CHINA), 2005-12-15 03:42:31

 

BELGRADE, Dec. 14 (Xinhuanet) -- The Serbian authorities and Kosovo ethnic Albanian majority must make a compromise in order toreach a decision on Kosovo's future status, a senior UN official said in Kosovo's capital Pristina on Wednesday.

 

Deputy UN envoy for Kosovo status talks, Albert Rohan, said that the goal of his meetings with Serbian and Albanian negotiating teams was to get a sense of problems that could be reflected on the process of status talks, the official Tanjug newsagency reported.

 

Rohan told a news conference in Pristina that Kosovo Serbs, if they wanted be part of the future in their territories, had to take an active part in all the processes.

 

Kosovo, a Serbian province, has been placed under UN administration since mid-1999. Its future status is a bitter subject between Belgrade and Kosovo's Albanian majority, who are demanding independence.

 

The process of defining Kosovo's future status has been launched by the UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari late last month, while direct talks between Kosovo's Albanian majority and Serbian authorities are expected to be held early next year.

 

Rohan said that both sides had to desist somewhat from their positions, so that an acceptable solution may be found both for Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

 

Nothing concrete can be offered to either side, he said, addingthat the UN envoy's job is just to push forward the process of twoopposed sides that somehow have to be brought into line. Enditem

Serbian arguments in negotiations on Kosovo and Metohija

KiM Info Newsletter 14-12-05

Nova Srpska Politicka Misao, Belgrade, Monday, December 05, 2005
by Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, Chief of the Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohija
 
The constitutional name of the southern Serbian province is Kosovo and Metohija, originating from the word "kos" meaning blackbird and the word "metoh" meaning monastery estate. Kosovo and Metohija comprise slightly over 12 percent of the territory of the Republic of Serbia. It is the cradle of our medieval Serbian state, and the location of the seat of the Patriarchate of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Kosovo and Metohija has significant natural resources in the form of mineral ores and reserves of lignite: the Kosovo, Drenica and Metohija basin contain almost 15 billion tons of coal. The mine is located close to the surface ranging from 41 to 100 meters thus greatly simplifying excavation. The annual production of electrical energy in Thermoelectrical Facility Kosovo A is 1.9 billion kilowatt hours, and Thermoelectrical Facility Kosovo B produces 2.3 billion kilowatt hours. The reserves of lead ore are 7.5 million metric tons and the Goles magnesite mine near Lipljan has estimated reserves of 2.4 million tons of this ore, as well as 92.2 million tons of dolite and 10 million tons of serpentine, a decorative stone. The Strezovce magnesite mine near Kosovska Kamenica has an estimated reserve of some 5 million tons of magnesite and significant reserves of andezite.
 
Just during the period from 1971 to 1985 the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia invested 15 billion U.S. dollars in Kosovo and Metohija; the republic of Serbia alone invested 9.6 billion U.S. dollars. Today Serbia is paying off the foreign debt of Kosovo and Metohija in the amount of one billion and four hundred million U.S. dollars; during the period from 2002 to November 2005, the amount paid was 130 million.
 
Today in Kosovo and Metohija there are 142,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians living in 112 enclaves, while the number of Albanians is just over 1.5 million. A total of 230,000 Serbs and other non-Albanians were expelled from the province after June 1999, and the number of returnees is less than 12,000. The number of those who have voluntarily left Kosovo and Metohija in the past six years is approximately 20,000. Serbs have been completely cleansed from all urban centers with the exception of northern Kosovska Mitrovica, the only multiethnic city in Kosovo and Metohija, where Serbs are the majority population. According to cadastral records, 60 percent of land in Kosovo and Metohija is owned by Serbs.
 
Recently talks have begun on the future status of Kosovo and Metohija. In October, when Ambassador Kai Eide submitted his report to the United Nations Security Council, for the first time actual living conditions in Kosovo and Metohija were publicly revealed. It was no longer a matter of Serbs complaining and a few independent journalists and intellectual supporters of the subjugated making their voices heard; Ambassador Eide unveiled how the human rights of Serbs and other non-Albanians were being violated as if the rule of law did not exist, as well as how coercion of judges, prosecutors and witnesses was a regular phenomenon, and Albanian society was more loyal to its family or clan than to legal and civilizational norms. The ambassador also spoke about the general sense of anarchy because not one perpetrator of numerous murders nor the initiators of the March violence in 2004 have been captured and sentenced. Freedom of movement for non-Albanians in Kosovo and Metohija does not exist.
 
And while the Kosovo Albanians are explaining to the world how the independence of Kosovo is a panacea that will solve all of Kosovo's problems and magically improve all eight standards, and bring peace and stability to the region, the Serbs are heading into the negotiations counting on international law and bringing to the negotiating table several issues, all of which can be reduced to the formula "standards and status".
 
In its reliance on international law, the Serbian side is thinking primarily of several important documents, including UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which guarantees the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as well as the sovereignty of FRY over the territory of Kosovo and Metohija. In the text these guarantees are mentioned three times, just as substantial autonomy is also mentioned three times. There is no mention anywhere of independence or self-determination which the Albanian side is talking about today. The UN Charter is also an important document for us because it states that the right to self-determination is enjoyed only by constitutive peoples, not by national minorities, and as we know the Kosovo Albanians are a national minority. In the Helsinki Final Act, the document on which all European states are founded, it is said that that two states can unite or a part of a state can secede from its hub only with the mutual agreement of both. And finally, also very important are the conclusions and findings of the Badinter Commission from January 1992, according to which only republics have the right to self-determination. Let us not forget that it is according to the principles of this commission that the former SFRY dissolved and that the Serbs, despite the fact that they were constitutive peoples in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, did not get the right to determine their state-constitutional future.
 
The reader may well ask him or herself why so much insistence on legalism but the matter is quite simple. The question of status is an entirely a matter of legality and not of politics. All other issues that we wish to discuss during the forthcoming negotiations also have a very strong political dimension. Therefore, the Serbian side is bringing a catalogue of topics to the negotiating table that can be divided into four groups.
 
The first is the future status of Kosovo and Metohija. At a session of the Assembly of the Republic of Serbia, a resolution of the Serbian Government was adopted whereby Kosovo and Metohija is offered substantial autonomy. This means that Kosovo Albanians retain everything they have now, meaning a president, a government, a parliament and judicial authority. These institutions, which are now acting in a provisional capacity, would become permanent. What is not offered to the Albanians as a part of substantial autonomy is a place in the United Nations, a Kosovo foreign affairs minister nor a Kosovo defense minister.
 
A second large group of topics is decentralization. Decentralization means the lowering of central administration from Pristina to the municipal level and the strengthening of local self-administration. What is necessary is a comprehensive and substantial decentralization that will also reach to smaller municipal units. It is essential to form 15 more non-Albanian municipalities that would take care of education, health, social protection, economic development and privatization, media, culture and religious freedoms, judicial matters to the level of the municipal court, and police to the municipal level. In this way, the province would be stabilized, the principle of accountability, as well as the principle of security, reinforced. The door to returns would be opened and the survival of Serbs and other non-Albanians would be ensured. Establishment of horizontal ties would have a political as well as a functional character because obviously small municipalities cannot have their own court, hospital, secondary school...
 
A third group comprises economic topics, including private ownership of apartments, houses, destroyed or illegally occupied, ownership of land, meadows, fields, woods, as well as the problem of construction without building permits on land owned by Serbs. The Serbian Orthodox Church, too, has not resolved the problem of its property which still remains to be returned to it. State ownership of hotels, factories, mines, etc. also needs to be a topic of negotiations. Privatization, which is now taking place completely illegally, without consideration for the factual situation establishing what belongs to whom, also needs to be cleared up. The Kosovo Trust Agency has taken over Serbian state owned property in "trusteeship" for 99 years but is not hesitating to take the 10 or 15 percent of a factory that is sound and sell it to a private party.
 
The fourth group of topics is the so-called "security package". First of all, this means individual personal security, institutional protection of non-Albanian ethnic groups, institutional and armed protection of religious and patrimonial sites, and fighting against organized crime. Institutional protection of non-Albanian communities is essential due to the flagrant violation of human rights on a strictly ethnic basis; consequently, an ombudsperson for human rights is necessary but it is also essential to establish a special one for the protection of non-Albanian communities. Since 1999 156 Orthodox Christian churches have been destroyed, 60 of them classified as cultural monuments. Luckily, there are still monasteries and churches left in Kosovo and Metohija and UNESCO has categorized them highly. They represent not just the heritage of Serbian Orthodoxy but European and world cultural heritage, and we must certainly not allow the maturity of extremists to be tested on these pearls of spirituality. Organized crime in Kosovo is flourishing. Drug trading is traditional; there is a so-called Afghan cocaine route, and heroin production is highly developed. In addition to drug trading in the past few years the human slave trade has also flourished.
 
All of these topics are in an integral part of the building of peace and stability in the region. An independent Kosovo would bring unrest and send a signal to Albanians in western Macedonia or Epirus in northern Greece, in the south of Serbia or east of Montenegro, to Serbs in Republika Srpska or Serbs in Croatia that they can get their own states. All separatist movements will be following the resolution of the Kosovo problem very closely and will see a chance for themselves in the Kosovo precedent. Kosovo and Metohija is a unique national and state phenomenon. The Albanian demand for a state is irrational. History and law do not recognize the possibility of any ethnic group, especially one that already has its own state, being voluntarily given a second state on the territory of an already existing one. Relinquishing one's own state territory to another state, in this case, a second Albanian state in the Balkans, makes no sense. The Albanian people in Kosovo and Metohija has probably interpreted some political developments as a promise or perhaps it has even received a promise from someone, going back to the time of Titoism as well as later. Now when they are getting the maximum, it appears to the Albanians that they are not getting anything because for the Albanians everything except full sovereignty is nothing.
 
On the other hand, for the Serbs the Kosovo myth contains their entire spiritual and psychological potential. The Kosovo epic represents an interweaving of the Orthodox and the national. We know that the pragmatic and positivistic world does not care much about myths but without the mythic images of a people one cannot evaluate the essence of its being nor recognize its essential identity. The Kosovo myth, like most myths, originated in the consciousness of tragedy. It defined and sustained the Serbian people as its archetype and its spiritual vertical plane. Myths are necessary; they are the mirror of our nation's soul. Nevertheless, for the Serbs the time is ripe to venture from the zone of tragedy into the zone of universal human values and life values. The Kosovo covenant is a covenant of death and suffering. We should preserve it within ourselves but without following the path of suffering as a people yet again in a countless series in our history. That is why we are setting out in negotiations on the future status of Kosovo and Metohija rationally, relying on international law, offering the Albanians in the province the maximum to decide their own future, and proposing topics on which the civilized and cultured West rests, which are the economy, democratization and protection of human rights. I hope that the Western democracies will help democratic Serbia to survive.

Rohan: "Status will not fall from heaven" for Kosovo

RELIEF WEB (SWITZERLAND)

 

Source: Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA)

Date: 14 Dec 2005 

 

Pristina (dpa) - The hostile ethnic communities in Kosovo will have to work hard to find a solution for the future status of Serbia's breakaway province, a United Nations officials warned Wednesday in Pristina.

 

"The solution for the future status of Kosovo will not fall from heaven, Kosovars will have to work for it,'' said Albert Rohan, an Austrian diplomat who is a deputy chief negotiator in Kosovo talks.

 

Rohan said that he appealed on both the majority Albanians and the embattled minority Serbs to sit together and start resolving their huge differences.

 

"I told (Kosovo Serb leaders) ... if you want to have a future in Kosovo, you will have to participate in all of the processes,'' Rohan told a press conference.

 

The vastly dominant Albanians, who want quick independence for Kosovo, need to strengthen the rule of law, protect human rights, negotiate a decentralization plan and kick-start the moribund economy, he advised.

 

"Status will not come automatically, there is work to be done on certain issues,'' Rohan said, adding that security was of particular concern and warning that any violence was "counter-productive''.

 

"I appealed to Kosovo Albanians to reach out to other communities, especially the Serb community,'' he said. "But I also appealed to the Serbs to participate in the shaping of the future of Kosovo.''

 

Kosovo was the scene of a bloody ethnic conflict, which ended when NATO expelled Belgrade's security forces in 1999, paving the way for a U.N. administration that has since been in charge of the province.

 

The talks, with the Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari as the top U.N. envoy, began a month ago. Serbia insists on retaining sovereignty over Kosovo and offers it an autonomy, but the Albanians are balking at anything less than independence.

 

There were no direct highest-level contact between Belgrade and Pristina yet.

 

"Regarding direct political talks ... on the ministerial level, it will happen in January. But with regard to the highest team level talks, we do not know yet when it could happen,'' Rohan said.

 

Rohan was due to visit Belgrade later in the day.

UN envoy says Kosovo still far from the deal on its future

Associated Press, Dec 14, 2005 7:11 AM

 

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-A U.N. envoy told ethnic Albanian leaders Wednesday that minority protection was essential to resolving Kosovo's disputed status.

 

Albert Rohan, who is helping U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari lead the talks, also told representatives of the Serb minority in Kosovo to participate in the province's political life, which they have boycotted for nearly two years.

 

"Status won't come automatically," Rohan told reporters, concluding his visit in Kosovo.

 

"The solution won't fall from heaven," he said. "They have to really pull up their socks and start to work."

 

Rohan urged ethnic Albanian leaders to reach out to the Serb and other minorities living here by addressing issues such as local government reform aimed at giving them more say in the areas where they live.

 

Kosovo's 100,000-strong Serb minority lives in isolated enclaves, protected by NATO-led peacekeepers. Their leaders have refused participation in the province's ethnic-Albanian dominated institutions since a wave of riots by ethnic Albanian mobs targeted them in 2004.

 

"We want them to have a future in Kosovo, we want to facilitate this and guarantee this, but they must also participate in shaping the future of Kosovo," Rohan said of the Serbs.

 

After the meetings in Kosovo, Rohan traveled to Serbia's capital, Belgrade.

 

Kosovo, officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, has been administered by the United Nations since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

The U.N.-mediated talks on solving Kosovo's future status are expected to formally begin in January. Negotiations are expected to be tough, with Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority insisting on independence, while Serbia and the Serb minority wanting to retain at least formal control over the region.

 

Rohan said that the intetention of joining the European Union one day was an essential incentive in the process of determining the future of the province, but conceded that the body "is in crisis" over the future enlargement which could eventually bring in the countries of the Balkans.

Authorities arrest 80 mobsters operating between Italy and Albania

Associated Press, Dec 13, 2005 10:42 AM

 

ROME-Italian authorities announced the arrest Tuesday of 80 suspected members of a criminal gang that ran prostitution rings and smuggled arms and drugs between Italy and Albania.

 

Carabinieri paramilitary police said the operation targeted an Albanian gang based in Calabria that worked with the 'ndrangheta, the organized crime group based in the southern Italian region.

 

The suspects, most of whom were Albanian, are accused of criminal association with the aim of human trafficking, forcing people into slavery, running prostitution rings, and trafficking arms and drugs.

 

Carabinieri in the Calabrian town of Catanzaro said the 'ndrangheta allowed the forced prostitution of girls from Eastern Europe in exchange for arms and drugs imported from Albania.

 

Dozens of the girls had been sold by their families, seized, or lured with promises of work or marriage, and had mostly crossed to Italy from Albania on clandestine boat trips, a police statement said.

 

The arrests, which came at the end of a five-year operation code-named "Harem," were made in Italy, Albania and Germany.

 

"An alliance between Albanian criminals and affiliates of the 'ndrangheta has been struck down," said Italy's top anti-mafia prosecutor Piero Grasso, according to comments reported by the ANSA news agency.

 

Italian police said the case was the largest operation by Albanian authorities against organized crime.

 

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu congratulated police for the operation, adding that "the fight against the 'ndrangheta is an absolute priority for our country."

 

Pisanu warned last month that the 'ndrangheta has become the most powerful and aggressive of Italian criminal organizations.

UNESCO to restore 13 Kosovo churches, mosques

TRIBUNE DE GENEVE (SWITZERLAND), 13 décembre 2005 15:19

 

PARIS, Dec 13 (AFP)

 

Restoration work is to begin next year in Kosovo on seven Serbian Orthodox and six Islamic heritage sites, damaged during years of inter-ethnic violence in the province, UNESCO announced on Tuesday.

 

The sites -- five churches, a cathedral and a monastery, three mosques and three hammams -- were chosen earlier this month by a UNESCO expert committee, among a list of 75 buildings.

 

The restoration work, to be carried out in 2006-7, is to be funded with pledges secured at an international donors conference in May.

 

"This meeting certainly represents an essential step in the protection of an invaluable cultural heritage," UNESCO Director-General Koichiro Matsuura said in a statement.

 

He stressed that Kosovo's diverse cultural heritage could also be "a factor of reconciliation" between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

 

The Serbian province has been under UN administration since 1999, after a NATO bombing campaign ended an offensive by Belgrade against ethnic Albanian rebels.

 

Ethnic tensions remain high as ethnic Albanians want to break away from Belgrade which sees the province as a cradle of Serbian culture and history.

 

The United Nations is currently mediating between Belgrade and Pristina ahead of talks on Kosovo's final status.

 

International donors in May pledged a total of 10 million dollarsmillion euros) for the restoration of religious and secular buildings in the province, of which some three million dollars have been confirmed.

UN Kosovo personnel come under fire as jail break is foiled

UNITED NATIONS NEWS CENTRE, 13 December 2005

 

A Romanian Special Police Unit working under the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) came under fire yesterday during an unsuccessful prison breakout by 14 inmates in the western part of the province, which the world body has administered since 1999.

 

There were no casualties, but two vehicles were hit by gunfire, a UN spokesman said today.

 

Within the prison, staff managed to reassert control after initially being overpowered. Simultaneously, however, the Romanian Unit was shot at by unknown persons.

 

Police are investigating the events both inside and outside the prison.

 

The UN has administered Kosovo since North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces drove out Yugoslav troops amid grave human rights abuses in fighting between majority Albanians and Serbs.

UN says resolving Kosovo status will result in new resolution

XINHUA (CHINA), 2005-12-13 06:26:35

 

BELGRADE, Dec. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- Resolving the future status of Kosovo will result in a new United Nations Security Council resolution which will guarantee multi-ethnicity and safety for allin Kosovo, a UN spokesman was quoted as saying on Monday.

 

The presence of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and international community in the Serbian province will be necessary even after its status is resolved, the official Tanjug news agencyreported, quoting UNMIK spokesman Neeraj Singh.

 

During the negotiations on status, the UNMIK will continue to focus on decentralization, return of internally displaced persons,economic development and guaranteeing security for all, he said.

 

Kosovo has been administered by the UNMIK since mid-1999. The process of defining Kosovo's future status has been launched by UNenvoy Martti Ahtisaari late last month, while direct talks betweenKosovo's pro-independent Albanian majority and Serbian authoritiesare expected to be held early next year.

 

Singh said that there are isolated groups who will provoke incidents to try to undermine the negotiating process, but the UNMIK is determined to counter such activities.

 

He added that the international community would spare no efforts to secure safety in Kosovo. Enditem

Discrimination of non-Albanian communities in Kosovo-Metohija continues

RELIEF WEB (SWITZERLAND)

 

Source: Government of Serbia

Date: 10 Dec 2005

 

Belgrade/Prizren, Dec 10, 2005 - On the occasion of the International Human Rights Day celebrated annually on December 10, Deputy Ombudsman for Kosovo-Metohija Ljubinko Todorovic said that the most frequently violated human rights of non-Albanian communities in Kosovo-Metohija are freedom of movement and accessibility of institutions of the system, followed with a problem of discrimination.

 

In a statement to the Beta news agency, Todorovic said that the discrimination is most conspicuous in realisation of property rights, since the problem of destroyed and plundered property dating back to 1999 has not been adequately solved and perpetrators found and punished.

 

He said that in spite of all that, some progress has been made in this area, since on the intervention of Ombudsman for Kosovo-Metohija Marek Nowicki, UNMIK Police and Justice Department changed the previously made decision of not processing nearly 18 thousand cases concerning property issues that has been filed since 1999.

 

However, as Todorovic said, only 500 cases can be effectively and rapidly solved, while long processes await the rest of the cases.

 

Todorovic also expressed his dissatisfaction with the opportunities for non-Albanian communities to use their mother tongues.

 

"Wherever you go in Kosovo-Metohija, the only language you hear and see in written is the language of the Albanian majority. UNMIK Regulation 2000/45, which explicitly prohibits the change of names of towns and cities, is constantly being breached, thus violating one of the essential rights. It is difficult for every community to bear witness to such things," said Todorovic.

 

He also mentioned that despite the existing regulations concerning the sector of primary, secondary and higher education in Kosovo-Metohija, deviations can be perceived in that sector as well.

 

"In some parts of Kosovo-Metohija, certain communities are denied the right to education in mother tongue, so they attend classes in the language of Albanian majority. Such a situation is outrageous and equals discrimination that will almost certainly go down in history as such," concluded Deputy Ombudsman for Kosovo-Metohija.

Serbian priest in Kosovo: Orthodox Church against ethnic states in Balkans

BBC Monitoring, December 12, 2005

A prominent Serbian Orthodox Church priest in Kosovo has voiced the church's opposition to the creation of ethnic states in the Balkans. In an interview with the Albanian daily Koha Dittore, Father Sava, argued for the preservation of the Serbiab church as a guarantee of Kosovo's multi-ethnic future. Father Sava urged that the Serbian church be given a protected status, and explained that this did not mean "exterritorial" or mini-state status. He also argued in favour of "humane" displacement of Serbs and Albanians within Kosovo. The following is the text of interview with Father Sava Janjic by Fatmir Aliu in Decani, headlined: "Serbian Orthodox Church is against separation of Kosova on ethnic lines" by Kosovo Albanian newspaper Koha Ditore on 4 December; subheadings as published:
 
Assigned by the Serbian Orthodox Church to maintain contacts with all international representatives are interested in Orthodox Church's views, in an interview for Koha Ditore, Father Sava Janjic spoke about the role that the church will have in the future in Kosova [Kosovo], and the requests that this church has for the Kosovar and international institutions. He also spoke about the ShPK's [Kosovo Police Service, KPS] work and the contacts with official Pristina [Prishtina]. He complained mainly about the rhetoric, technical issues, but also about security.
 
Father Sava Janjic explained the requests he presents to the 'internationals' to provide protection to historic, cultural, and religious monuments of Kosovar heritage. He also expressed regret to the Kosovar people on behalf of the Serbian Orthodox Church for the suffering caused during the war in Kosova.
 
Father Sava Janjic, deputy to Bishop Teodosije, has been assigned to maintain contacts with international representatives during the process of status talks and to convey the positions of the Orthodox Church.
 
[Aliu] You said that you offer concrete solutions to your international interlocutors. What does this mean?
 
[Janjic] It is important to ensure that, regardless of the status, the Serbian Orthodox Church will have its freedom of action, its missionary and religious work in Kosovar society, that it will not to be discriminated against, but its independent action and the contact of this diocese with its administrative centre - the church in Belgrade - will be allowed. Let me explain myself: the Serbian Orthodox Church has its administrative centre in Belgrade, but its formal centre is in the Peje [Pec] Patriarchate, which has been the centre of the Serb Orthodox Church since the 12th century. In addition, the long-term security of our religious monuments is also important. This is an issue that relates to the people here and multi-ethnicity of Kosova. If we want to build a Kosova based on the principle of multi-ethnicity, it is very important for these to continue and exist in this environment and that heritage and monuments of Christianity function. Great misunderstanding exists among some political representatives at central and local levels. These protected zones are not impenetrable zones or places, but only zones with additional restrictions, which concern industrialization, construction of buildings, and exploration of natural resources, such as wood cutting. This means that even if you have a property or a piece of land or more private property near an important monument, you just cannot construct any building, factory or open a mine. This is not just applicable to Christian historical and cultural monuments, but to monuments of all religions, to simply protect them together with the environment that surrounds them, because they represent a unique environment. In this regard, we cannot imagine having a large hotel built near the Decan [Decani] Monastery, because in this way it will ruin the entire environment and tourists would not be interested. The tourists want to see something authentic, but also the beauty of nature. Objects for tourists can be built in appropriate places, but not near religious monuments.
 
Visits to monastery
 
[Aliu] How frequent are your contacts with official Prishtina?
 
[Janjic] Certainly, it would be better if we would have more frequent contacts with Kosovar central institutions, apart from a few meetings that we had so far, which were more of an informal nature. We have invited Kosova Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi to visit the Decan Monastery and his visit would be very welcome. I also have to mention that [Environment and Spatial Planning] Minister Ardian Gjini, together with Deputy Chief Administrator Rossin, visited us twice within six months. But certainly we maintain regular contacts with the municipal authorities of Decan. There were also some other special personalities from Albanian political life in Kosova who did not come officially and who, precisely for this reason, did not want to give a political context to their visits. I want to say that we have contacts and we meet unofficially in various circumstances, where we exchange our views. But UNMIK [UN Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo], which follows our views . . . .
 
[Aliu, interrupting] When you have problems, do you knock on UNMIK or Kfor's [Kosovo Force] doors, or those of the Kosovar institutions?
 
[Janjic] To tell you the truth, for the time being Kosova is under the UN protectorate and certainly the highest authority in Kosova is UNMIK. The issue of security, and certain issues that are related to religious monuments, are under Kfor's jurisdiction. Therefore, it is logical that we approach them more often. We do not want to ignore the bodies of the local authority, but I have to say that in some cases the local authority has limited powers to engage in specific issues. I feel very bad and we express regret for all that has happened in Kosova in the past. For the killings and the victims of the war in Kosova, but I hope that those people who have come through this torture have understood how painful this is and will change the reality, not allowing other people to experience the same pain.
 
[Aliu] Do you feel forgotten by the Kosovar institutions?
 
[Janjic] I would like the central institutions of Kosova to see all the people as citizens of Kosova, and not see one group of citizens, the Albanian citizens, as their primary interest and the non-Albanians as their second interest. This point of view towards the people of Kosova will not take us to Europe, and certainly it discourages members of other ethnicities to experience the institutions of Kosova as their own. Politicization of all possible issues is a characteristic of the Serbian party and the Albanian one. This is a fact. But I want to say that if the institutions of Kosova want to bring all ethnicities together, they should behave equally towards all of the people. An ethnic approach dominates, so the communities in Kosova, which are not Albanian, feel that an Albanian society is being built in Kosova and, as such, this society will be built exclusively for the Albanian community, whereas the others could be here and there.
 
[Aliu] Can we say that the Serb community of Kosova pays no attention to the Kosovar institutions?
 
[Janjic] Here in the Decan Monastery, we have more contacts with the Kosovar authorities than in any other place where Serbs live in Kosova. Through no action of ours have we proved that we do not respect or recognize the Kosovar institutions. It is a fact that the Serbs of Kosova do not participate in these institutions, unfortunately. There are many reasons, and may can be justifiable or not, depending on how you see the arguments. It is also a fact that these Serbs participated in these institutions before and then 17 March [ 2004] happened.
 
[Aliu] Do you believe that the March riots happened because of their participation in the institutions?
 
[Janjic] Not because of the Serbs' participation in the institutions, but the institutions failed completely in the most crucial moments, as well as Kfor and UNMIK. Simply, the Serbs understood, in a way, that despite their participation in the institutions they are not able to improve their position and do something for their community.
 
[Aliu] So you believe it is better to stay outside the institutions?
 
[Janjic] No, I would not say so. I believe it is better to be a part of the institutions, but not by all means. It is necessary for the Kosovar institutions and the international community to create space for such inclusion, by strengthening the mechanisms that would disable the making of decisions that are discriminatory towards Serbs and other minorities. Then those ethnic communities would feel that there is more space for them.
 
[Aliu] What mechanisms are you talking about?
 
[Janjic] Mechanisms that would stop the phenomena of the past. We witnessed that when various documents were distributed in the Kosova Assembly, the translation into the Serbian language was missing. So, an observation of the internal work, as a preventive mechanism, is requested here. But there are other banal problems, too, for instance the placing of mono-ethnic murals on the corridors of the Kosova Assembly, but on the other hand we want to present Kosova as a multiethnic state. With this a message is sent that there is not much space for other nationalities in this country.
 
[Aliu] But the murals were removed, immediately after the complaints were made. Are there now other conditions and requests for participation in the institutions?
 
[Janjic] I do not want you to misunderstand me. We cannot make a problem out of history, but we certainly cannot forget it. But it is necessary to promote history in such a way as not to be oriented against any ethnic community. Here in Decan, the names of streets have been completely changed. The street that takes you from Decan to the monastery used to be called the 'Monastery Street', whereas now it has been renamed 'Skenderbeu'. I believe this is not a good sign or a wise decision. The problem is not in 'Skenderbeu', because if you ask me, I would name the main street of Decan 'Skenderbeu'. But it is not right to remove the name 'Monastery Street' as there are no other signs in the town that show where the monastery is.
 
Status - not primary
 
[Aliu] Have you complained to the local authorities about this issue?
 
[Janjic] On many occasions, but no signs showing where the monastery is have been put up so far. I have also raised this issue with Prime Minister Kosumi, Xhavit Haliti, but also with the others. I believe there is a will among some people, but then again, there is a lack of readiness to come out in public and say that, nevertheless, Kosova should show openhandedness for various ethnic communities, which is also the wealth of a multi-ethnic society.
 
[Aliu] What is the future of Kosova Serbs?
 
[Janjic] First of all, the future depends on young people. Economic development is needed for this and political stability is needed for the economic development. There will be no investments from outside in Kosova as long as the investors do not see that the Kosovar society is stable.
 
[Aliu] So you believe that Kosova is not stable in the political and social aspect?
 
[Janjic] In the entire Western Balkans we have a problem with organized crime. This is not something that only exists in Kosova. There is also such crime in Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Hercegovina. But if we see what happened on 17 March and interpret it in the economic language, the damages were worth millions. This would hardly convince anyone to invest, without any prior stability.
 
[Aliu] What about the unresolved status of Kosova? Does this issue have any impact on the lack of foreign investment or not?
 
[Janjic] Certainly it does. The status is one of the most important elements, but not the main one. In parallel with the building of the status, it should also be working on standards. The status is not a magic wand that automatically brings foreign investors who would open new workplaces right away. A lot needs to be done concerning the rule of law to bring investors. We have quite good laws in Kosova, but when they are interpreted at a municipal level, half of these laws are not valid. The influence of families or clans who replaced the institutions is still evident. This hinders application of the law the most.
 
[Aliu] Which clans and families are you talking about?
 
[Janjic] I am talking about families, tribes; they are very organized people and have great influence. The local institutions, in some parts of Kosova, are often not completely autonomous. They depend on some individuals or groups. So, as long as the judiciary and the police are not completely independent...
 
[Aliu, interrupting] So you believe that the police are not independent?
 
[Janjic] The ShPK is on the right track, but in the way [UN standards envoy] Kai Eide said, and I would not want to personally analyse this issue. There is a limitation as to what level the ShPK can perform its duty. For this reason the EU will take over control from the ShPK, to shape to fight organized crime, in the war against ethnic violence, and so on.
 
[Aliu] With all due respect, but I am not asking you about Eide's opinion, but yours. Do you believe that the ShPK is independent or not?
 
[Janjic] I fear that it is not yet completely independent, because, if we examine it in the plan of power transferal, almost all powers have been transferred to them, whereas we still have cases when absolutely inadequate investigations are being initiated. Practically, investigations into the largest number of cases have ended, and almost nothing has been resolved. When we hear and see such investigations, we get the impression that the ShPK does not want to do its job or is trying to cover up for someone that is involved in crime. I do not want to generalize things, because there are many people in the ShPK who want to do their job seriously.
 
[Aliu] Let me put it this way. Would you feel safe if the ShPK protected the Decan Monastery instead of Kfor?
 
[Janjic] I believe that the ShPK is not yet capable of and mature enough to deal with this kind of security. I do not know in the future... [ellipses as published] I do not want to prejudge anything, because I do not know how long Kfor will stay here and what situation we will have. For the time being, in this area the ShPK is primarily concerned with illegal wood cutting and some other police issues. But the security issue is of a wider character than the ShPK is currently trained for and technically capable of.
 
[Aliu] What status do you request from the institutions of Kosova, as a community of Orthodox churches in Kosova, or what status will you request when the status of Kosova is resolved? I do not mean from Belgrade or the international community, but from the Kosovar institutions.
 
[Janjic] The starting point will be the principles of the Contact Group. The fifth point of these principles speaks about a special status for religious and cultural institutions and monuments. A special institutional protection mechanism, which would prevent any kind of activity that would harm this community and which would enable the normal function of monasteries, should be ensured for the monasteries of the Serbian Orthodox Church. Now I cannot define exactly what should this status should be. Certainly, tax alleviation would also be included in this request. Also certain guarantees from the international community so that local authorities do not have the possibility to change them.
 
[Aliu] You are afraid that the municipal authority would change something in the guarantees that a central authority would offer you?
 
[Janjic] In principle, if something is not guaranteed by the international community, there is always the possibility for the local institutions, with the number of their votes, to have the possibility to make changes. So I believe that would be much better for this future agreement to also have international guarantees. It must be understood that the cultural heritage should be something that connects all ethnic communities, and not something that separates us, or as something that is used as a political exponent for certain political objectives. Our goal is not for us to be someone's political exponent, but to be a part of this Kosovar society. We are a part of the Serbian cultural heritage, but we are in Kosova. At the same time, we are a part of European and world heritage; therefore preservation of this heritage is in the interest of Kosovar institutions and certainly we will work with them.
 
[Aliu] So you believe that the future status of the Serbian Orthodox Church is related to Kosova? Not episodic connections with Belgrade, with Moscow, or other centres?
 
[Janjic] Absolutely. As the others do. The Serbian Orthodox Church does not have its own territory, sovereignty, or state. This church acts in various places. We have dioceses in Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, the United States, Austria, and New Zealand. Normal communication with the administrative centre has been enabled in all of those places. It is known that the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church is Patriarch Pavle, who is in Belgrade, and all the states, Macedonia, Austria, and even New Zealand know this. As such, the church does not imply any territorial or political presence. For instance, the Serbian Orthodox Church, with its believers in Germany, does not request the territory of the church to be united with Serbia. This is absurd and there are no such political connotations anywhere.
 
[Aliu] Are you close to Belgrade's policy in the sense of their political requests and their policy on historical monuments, even when it is said that "autonomy should be granted to Orthodox religious heritage?"
 
[Janjic] As a church we emphasize that the church should not do the state's job, and nor should the state should take the church's role. As a church, we are interested in the existence of our people and our sacred monuments. The church is not just a construction; it is a living body, an institution, with many monuments and a cultural heritage.
 
[Aliu] With all due respect, you did not answer. Do you request some kind of 'exterritorial status' for Orthodox cultural and religious monuments in Kosova or not?
 
[Janjic] It is very important to understand that protected zones do not mean that they are exterritorial places, mini states, or even special states within one state in the territorial aspect. First of all, they are places (territories) with a certain amount of restrictions regarding industrial construction, exploration of natural resources, and its goal is to protect the historic monument but also the natural surrounding. There are such protected zones in many countries of Europe, but also in the United States.
 
[Aliu] You think that you will encounter understanding among Kosovar political leaders for these requests of yours?
 
[Janjic] There are various ways of illustrating a democratic state, which is capable of respecting the cultural and ethnic pluralism of its people. Now if Kosova becomes a state tomorrow, everything should not be identified as a symbol of Albanians or all-Albanian.
 
[Aliu] If we understood you correctly and if we take from the context what you are saying so far, you, too, are impatient for the status of Kosova to be resolved. You are complaining about issues of rhetoric, technical aspects, and street names.
 
[Janjic] In general, we have not firmed up our requests yet. We have just entered a process that will be intensive. I have expressed some of our views. Those technical modalities, that I mentioned, are some of them. Experts from the United States and Greece have promised us that they will help with their ideas.
 
Against ethnic states
 
[Aliu] Ideas related to what aspects?
 
[Janjic] General ideas: about the position of the church and monastery. Certainly, this issue will also be raised in the Kosova government and we want to be totally coordinated, in every aspect. Regardless of what solution is found, it should not be raised as an issue of cultural heritage, because it is an issue that goes beyond the boundaries. Belgrade has its positions, which is natural, but whatever the solution for Kosova the cultural and religious heritage in Kosova should not be risked. Our church is completely against the separation of Kosova on ethnic lines. We are categorically against this idea. We do not believe that ethnic states should be created in the Balkans. But we are also against the principle of a Kosova created and based on an ethnic state of Albanians. Simply, Kosova is a place where other communities have been living for centuries and these communities should be allowed to be a part of the future of Kosova.
 
[Aliu] Do you oppose the will of the majority of the people of Kosova who want to decide for themselves on the political future of the country in which they live?
 
[Janjic] I personally believe that the church should not take on such a role, opposing or agreeing with the will of the people, or even worse, representing the position of one state. I can say that the church is interested in all of the people being represented and not just to have the representation of the majority to the detriment of the minority, or for the majority to be harmed because of the minority. Therefore, a solution that contributes to regional stability, not to have any more wars, should be found. It should be a solution that will not bring about the displacement of population or as they call it 'humane displacement', which is terrible.
 
[Aliu] You said 'humane displacement'. What are you talking about?
 
[Janjic] About moving the population from one part of Kosova to another, or the dividing of Kosova into two parts. I would not want the solution for Kosova to result in the displacement of Serbs from the localities where Albanians are in the majority or vice versa, from the north to the south. As a church, we support a solution that will take care of, first of all, the life of normal people and the economic development of the region in its entirety. The best solution and in the middle between some international principles, such as the right to self-determination, the people's will, but also stability for the entire region, should be found here . A balance between these norms should be found...
 
[Aliu] What is that balance? You must have a position, given that you are against separation of Kosova into two entities and you are for a solution that will satisfy, more or less, all of the communities in Kosova. If it is not one or the other, than what is the optimum?
 
[Janjic] I do not know. You are trying to get me to give a political statement, but...
 
[Aliu, interrupting] But all these are political statements. If you say that you are against the separation of Kosova, a thing that official Belgrade is trying to realize in Kosova, this is the position of Serbian President Boris Tadic.
 
[Janjic] Tadic's idea is not an idea for separation of Kosova from the outside, but from within. Nevertheless, the church does not support the separation idea, because then the existence of minorities in territories where the majority lives would be endangered. This would mean reunification of Balkan borders based on ethnic principles.
 
[Aliu] Do you support President Tadic's proposal?
 
[Janjic] Do not bring me into a position where I have to directly comment on such things. The position of the church in this situation, when we have various proposals in Serbia, is not to come out with statements in favour or against. The situation is delicate and we do not want the church to be part of an internal disagreement. Every idea for separation would be dangerous. But on the other hand, we are against the creation of a state where only the interests of Albanians would be represented...
 
[Aliu] How can you prejudge that such a thing will happen?
 
[Janjic] I am not saying that this will happen the next day, but in principle the church is against this. If Kosova could manage to show more interest in other communities, the fear of Kosova Serbs of an independent Kosova would be completely different. Great fear exists from the independence of Kosova. The people believe that in this way, despite the international and Kfor presence, the Serbs in Kosova cannot exist in an equal environment. You can see that the inscriptions in Serbian language are covered, torn, or painted. Monuments of culture have been destroyed to a great extent. How does the majority want to convince the minorities that what they are thinking of building will be a joint [effort]? We do not want extremes from either side. We do not want to have a state where tomorrow we would, once again, have to pack our bags and go somewhere else.
 
Proper relations
 
[Aliu] Allow me, but if you completely sidestep the will of the Kosovar society, and here I must add the majority, and in fact we do not know what this will is because we did not have a referendum about this issue, do you believe that the people or the institutional leaders should be asked first?
 
[Janjic] Political leaders should be elected by the people and speak about the will of the people. Therefore, if politicians were elected in a democratic way, and if they really are accountable before their electorate, then what they say should be the will of the people. Therefore, I never clearly understood the need of a referendum if we have politicians who were elected in a democratic way.
 
[Aliu] President Chirac was in favour of adopting the constitution [European], whereas the people were against the constitution in a referendum.
 
[Janjic] Referendums can greatly complicate things, because if a referendum is initiated in Kosova, the same thing could be done very easily in Serbia. Therefore, there would be even more complications . . . .
 
[Aliu, interrupting] But we are talking about two million people who live in Kosova and 10 million residents of a neighbouring state.
 
[Janjic] I want to say that I am not a politician. Your question is something new for me, because I never thought about such a thing. I believe that many factors will be taken into consideration during the talks process, not only the will of the people of Kosova, because the will of the people was created by the media. This is not a process that is related just to the will of the people, although I assess that will highly. Certainly it is important for the people to be asked and express their position, but I am afraid that the solution that will be found will not satisfy the interests of any party, as some say. This was said on several occasions also in diplomatic circles of the United States that the solution will be some kind of a compromise...
 
[Aliu] What does 'compromise' represent for you?
 
[Janjic] I honestly do not know what to say. Here, in the Decan Monastery, we live with the local people and we will continue to live together. Considering the situation which we are in here, and whatever the status of Kosova may be, I believe that this will not be reflected so much in our daily lives with regards to what our relations with the community with which we live will be. For us it is crucial to establish proper relations and understanding with other communities. Do not misunderstand me, but for me the issue of status is not so essential. The important things for me are quality of life, how the law, the rule of law, will be respected, and security. All this depends on the status. Some Serbs believe that if Kosova remained part of Serbia, all the Serbs' problems be solved automatically. This is not true. On the other hand, the Kosova Albanians believe that if Kosova becomes independent, all the problems would be solved, but perhaps they would become even more complicated.
 
Source: Koha Ditore, Pristina, in Albanian 4 Dec 05

EU considers key role in Kosovo

BBC, 12 December 2005, 14:50 GMT

 

The ethnic Albanian majority is pressing for independence The EU is considering taking a leading role in Kosovo after the future of the Serbian province is decided next year.

 

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn have suggested taking over the policing of the breakaway province from the UN.

 

They also suggest sending prosecutors, judges and prison staff to strengthen the rule of law, and substantially increasing aid to help cut joblessness.

 

EU foreign ministers asked them on Monday to continue working on the plan.

 

UN-mediated talks on Kosovo's future status are expected to begin formally in January.

 

The United Nations has administered Kosovo since a 1999 Nato bombing campaign halted a Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanians, but it is still officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro.

 

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority hopes for independence, while Serbia and the Serb minority living here want to retain at least formal control over the region.

 

The Solana-Rehn report talks of a tangible European prospect, whatever the outcome of the status talks.

 

It says economic aid should be used to tackle unemployment of more than 50%.

 

The foreign ministers reiterated the EU's readiness to take part in the status talks, through the EU's representative Stefan Lehne.

Reform of local gov't becomes the first stumbling-block in talks on Kosovo's future

Associated Press, Dec 12, 2005 7:43 AM

 

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-Kosovo's top U.N. official told ethnic Albanian leaders Monday the reform of local government in the province aimed at enhancing the rights of Serbs and other minorities will be a key factor in determining Kosovo's future status.

 

Soren Jessen-Petersen, the top official in the U.N-run province, urged the five-member team set to negotiate Kosovo's future in the upcoming talks to be ready to discuss it with Serbian leaders in Belgrade.

 

The reform of local governance will "be a key factor in determining the outcome of the status talks," Jessen-Petersen told reporters after the meeting.

 

U.N. and other Western officials have put pressure on ethnic Albanian leaders to address issues concerning minorities, in particular reforming local governance to give Serbs more say in areas where they live, as an incentive for them to participate in the political life of the province.

 

In addition, there are attempts to bring Kosovo and Belgrade officials together to discuss the issue later this month in Vienna, Austria, as part of the direct dialogue between the two, a process which runs separate from status talks.

 

The U.N.-mediated talks on Kosovo's future status are expected to formally begin in January. Although still officially a province of Serbia-Montenegro, the United Nations has administered Kosovo since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign halted the Serbian crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.

 

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority insists on independence, while Serbia and the Serb minority living here want to retain at least formal control over the region.

 

Albert Rohan, the deputy U.N. envoy who will arrive in Kosovo Monday for a new round of talks, said in an interview with Koha Ditore daily that reform is an attempt to forestall the division of the province along ethnic lines.

 

Ethnic Albanian leaders, fearing such division, insist that the process is Kosovo's internal matter, and should not be a subject of negotiations with Serbia.

 

However, they did not oppose the possibility of a meeting to discuss the matter in Vienna.

 

"The local government reform must be led by Pristina," said Hashim Thaci, the leader of Kosovo's largest opposition group. He said that "outside impact" on the process would involve the danger of province's ethnic partition.

 

Belgrade and the province's Serbs demand broad-reaching autonomy in the areas where they constitute a majority. Kosovo's government has put forward a plan that envisages new municipalities run by Serbs, albeit in smaller units than they have demanded.

UN Mediates Kosovo's Call For Independence

INTER PRESS SERVICE, Dec 09, 2005 8:16 PM by Vesna Peric Zimonjic

 

BELGRADE, Nov. 24, 2005 (IPS/GIN) -- United Nations mediator Martti Ahtisaari began his first fact-finding mission in Kosovo and Serbia this week on the future of the breakaway southern Serbian province, which is seeking independence.

 

The southern Serbian province of Kosovo, with a population of 2 million ethnic Albanians, became practically a U.N. protectorate in 1999.

 

Serbs regard Kosovo as the cradle of their medieval state. More than 140 Serb Orthodox monasteries and churches in Kosovo proclaim the glory of the past.

 

Serbia's influential Orthodox Church insists that Kosovo be declared "occupied territory" if independence is given to ethnic Albanians. The ultranationalist Radical Party is threatening to "lead the people into the streets."

 

The U.N. Security Council decided in October to solve the future status of Kosovo by the end of next year. Finnish diplomat Martti Ahtisaari was appointed mediator.

 

His shuttle diplomacy as he visited the Kosovo capital Pristina and later the Serbian capital Belgrade precedes direct talks between Serbian and Kosovan authorities. No date has been set for these talks.

 

"The status of Kosovo is a very serious political question for the region, for the European Union (EU) and the United States, who were involved in the situation surrounding the issue," international law professor Vojin Dimitrijevic told IPS. "It deserves a rational assessment: to find a solution that will satisfy all the involved parties."

 

Belgrade must "take a rational and not an emotional approach," historian Slobodan Markovic told IPS. "The Serb nation should be prepared for an outcome that might be different from what is politically propagated."

 

The U.N. administration and NATO peacekeepers entered Kosovo in June 1999 after 11 weeks of NATO bombing of Serbia. The bombing was undertaken due to the repressive policy of former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic against ethnic Albanians. That policy resulted in 10,000 deaths and the eviction of some 800,000 civilians from their homes.

 

Milosevic's repression followed a struggle by the local Albanian population for independence from Serbia. The Serb regime saw the armed rebellion by ethnic Albanians as terrorism.

 

Following the violence and bombing, some 100,000 Serbs fled Kosovo, fearing revenge by Albanians. But another 100,000 remain here in northern Kosovo and in several enclaves.

 

U.N. Resolution 1244 of June 1999 describes Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia. That reference has become the basis of a claim to Kosovo by Serb leaders and Serbs still living in the province who fiercely oppose the independence for Kosovo that ethnic Albanians seek.

 

"No Serb politician is honestly ready to admit that Kosovo is lost for Serbia," Dimitrijevic said. "And that is hypocrisy, unreality."

 

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told parliament Monday that Kosovo should be given "wide autonomy within Serbia." He said that granting of full independence to ethnic Albanians on sovereign Serbian land would "undermine the foundations of international law."

 

The Serb parliament adopted a resolution saying that Serbia was "ready for compromise but not for any abduction of its territory."

 

But the independence drive by ethnic Albanians has become stronger since 1999. Last week the Kosovo parliament adopted a resolution that "the will of Kosovo people for independence is non-negotiable." It also expressed Kosovo's "readiness for integration into Euro-Atlantic structures."

 

Serbia should think beyond Kosovo, Markovic said. "Serbia should forget the 1,000 years of history and think in a modern way. A faster course to European integration, where it is of no matter where one lives -- Serbia, Macedonia or Slovakia -- should be the target."

 

Dimitrijevic said Serbia's focus should be on the human rights of the remaining Serbs. "That is something the international community has ears for."

 

Ahtisaari is expected to do all he can to solve the issue. Under his mandate no party can leave talks once they are under way. If one of them abandons the talks, this will be regarded as acceptance of the documents under discussion.

 

"The EU is willing to provide conditional independence for Kosovo, under years-long EU supervisory mission with special provisions for Serbs and their religious sites, as well as oversight on the respect of their minority rights," a top-ranking EU diplomat told IPS. "Apart from that, there could be a joint future for Serbia and its neighbors inside the EU and NATO within the next decade."

 

Belgrade has so far turned a deaf ear to such proposals. Patriotic rhetoric prevails in media and politicians' statements.

 

But Ahtisaari is no stranger to Serbia and the Kosovo problem. Serbian media call him a "tough negotiator" for good reason.

 

Together with Russian envoy Victor Chernomyrdin, he brokered the deal in June 1999 on withdrawal of Milosevic's army and police from Kosovo in return for the end to NATO bombing.

 

According to witnesses' memoirs, Milosevic agreed only after Ahtisaari pointed to the desk they were talking across, and said bombs would continue to fall until Serbia became as flat as the desk. Milosevic yielded.

Visoki Decani Monastery signs painted over in black

KiM Info Newsletter 12-12-05

KIM Info Service, Decani, December 11, 2005

After months of insisting by the Visoki Decani Monastery administration and international representatives in Kosovo and Metohija on Friday, December 9, two signs were finally put up bearing the name of Visoki Decani Monastery, one located in the town center and another on the road leading to the monastery. The signs were written in three languages -Albanian, Serbian and English - and placed in order to indicate the existence and road to the monastery, which was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites last year. The signs were put up a day after the monastery received a visit from representatives of the Decani municipal assembly, who conveyed the municipality's desire to enhance cooperation with the monastery to Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan, the head of the monastery. Although neither the appearance nor the orthography on the signs corresponded to standards for a cultural monument of global significance, nevertheless, this step on the part of Decani municipal authorities was taken by the monastery as an encouraging sign, taking into account that for the past more than six years, Visoki Decani Monastery has practically not existed on the map of Kosovo and Metohija.

However, by the morning of the very next day (Saturday, December 10) both signs had been painted over in black, like all other signs in Serbian placed on the territory of Decani municipality. On the same day, Bishop Teodosije and Fr. Sava met in Pristina with French foreign minister Philippe Douste-Blazy and conveyed the serious concern of the Serbian Orthodox Church due to the difficult position of the Serbian people and Church in Kosovo and Metohija in the past six years. As one of the concrete examples of discrimination, they also showed a photograph with the obliterated name of the monastery, explaining to the French minister that the very fact that a sign with the name of a monastery under UNESCO protection cannot remain intact one single day shows that there is still no readiness for ethnic tolerance, freedom of return and possibility of survival for the Serbian population in Kosovo. In addition to special institutional protection for the Serbian people in the Province  to be implemented through an appropriate model of decentralization, Bishop Teodosije especially insisted upon long-term protection for Serbian Orthodox monasteries and other cultural monuments which, he underscored, have been targeted for the past six years by extremists without respect for cultural and civilizational values.

After meeting with the French foreign minister, Bishop Teodosije and Fr. Sava also met with Soren Jessen-Petersen at UNMIK headquarters in Pristina, who expressed his horror at the intolerance of the name of the monastery which, he said, represents one of the most significance cultural monuments in the Province. The UNMIK chief has promised that he will specifically demand that Kosovo institutions adequately respond to this act and emphasised that this incident is damaging for all Kosovo citizens.

In the near future Bishop Teodosije will be visiting Germany and EU institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg as part of a Serbian Orthodox Church delegation and together with other Christian religions on the territory of Serbia and Montenegro. It is expected that one of the main topics of discussion with German and European officials will be the issue of Kosovo and Metohija.

French foreign minister insists on respect for minorities in Kosovo talks

Associated Press, Dec 10, 2005 9:54 AM

 

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro-The French foreign minister told ethnic Albanian leaders Saturday that the province's aspiration for independence will be judged by its handling of minorities.

 

Philippe Douste-Blazy, who arrived in Kosovo for a brief meeting with top U.N. official Soren Jessen-Petersen, the province's President Ibrahim Rugova and the ethnic Albanian negotiators, said that the process ahead will be delicate and the status talks difficult.

 

"Today you have the power and the majority," Douste-Blazy said. "When you have the power and the majority, you have rights but duties too. Your duty is to respect the minorities."

 

Kosovo's final status remains a contentious issue, with the province's ethnic Albanian majority insisting on independence while Serbia and the Serb minority living here want to retain at least formal control over the region.

 

Serbs are Kosovo's largest minority although most of them fled the province in fear of ethnic Albanian revenge attacks following the end of the 1998-1999 conflict. The two ethnic groups remain deeply divided and tensions between them remain high.

 

His visit comes as the U.N.-sponsored process to determine whether Kosovo gains independence or remains a self-governing entity within Serbia-Montenegro is under way. The talks, which will be led by the former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, are expected to begin in January.

 

Douste-Blazy, who held meetings with the Serb leadership in Belgrade on Friday, also called for a "realistic approach" in the talks.

 

Although still technically a province within the loose union of Serbia and Montenegro, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations for more than six years, since a 1999 NATO bombing campaign ended Belgrade's hold on the region of 2 million people.

 

Some 2,400 French soldiers are deployed in Kosovo as part of the 17,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force patrolling the province.

 

Jessen-Petersen appealed to France, which is a member of the Contact Group, an advisory board on Kosovo, to stick to the agreed principles that say the province cannot return to its pre-1999 status, when it was under direct Serb rule, or be partitioned along Albanian and Serbian ethnic lines.

 

The group also has ruled out the creation of any new union between predominantly ethnic Albanian Kosovo and other countries in the region, such as Albania.

 

"The last 15 years in the Balkans have far too often seen the broken promises of the international community," Jessen-Petersen said. "Therefore, it is extremely important that we remain faithful to, stick to and respect the guiding principles."

Kosovo mission to be EU's most expensive

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND SECURITY NETWORK (SWITZERLAND)

 

ISN SECURITY WATCH (09/12/05) - Top EU officials have called on the bloc's 25 governments to be prepared to support the union's biggest and most expensive mission ever once the status issue for the UN-administered province of Kosovo has been resolved.

 

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and European Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn told EU governments in a seven-page report obtained by ISN Security Watch on Friday that the future mission in Kosovo would be the most expensive to date.

 

Although they have not put forward any exact figures, the amount could represent another great burden for the EU's 2007-2013 budget.

 

"With current expectation of a target date of around 1 January 2007, the [.] budget for 2007 would be significantly affected. While it is premature to make precise budget estimates, it is clear that an EU mission in Kosovo would by far be the most expensive and demanding operation since the creation of the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP)." Solana and Rehn said in the report.

 

They argued that the costs would be very high because the EU could end up financing not only its own mission, but the entire new international presence in Kosovo.

 

"The EU contribution to the future international presence may have to include the funding of any future interim civilian administration structure to implement the status settlement, as well as a future ESDP operation for police and rule of law," they wrote.

 

Solana and Rehn also asked that the money to implement such a mission be included in the EU's much disputed budget for 2007-2013.

 

"The EU needs to ensure that the financing under the 2007-2013 Financial Perspectives is adequate to finance existing and new instruments after Kosovo's future status is decided." the report says.

 

EU nations had welcomed the initial six-page report back in June, when both officials said the bloc should increase its role in Kosovo once the status was finally resolved and the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was brought to a close after more than six years.

 

At that time, EU governments backed the idea of a European police mission, similar to that in Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and more experts and European personnel in the sector of institutional building, economy, and rule of law.

 

Despite the cost, the revised Friday report, is expected to be welcomed by EU foreign ministers, who will meet on Monday in Brussels.

 

But the warning that such a mission - although not completely replacing the UN - would have to be funded perhaps totally by the EU, could be a new burden for European capitals that still have not resolved their disputes over the EU budget for the coming seven years.

 

Both Solana and Rehn have asked the British government, which holds the current rotating EU presidency, to consider in the budget proposals the financing of the future EU mission in Kosovo.

 

Explaining the report on Friday, Commissioner Rehn told reporters that the EU "cannot fail in Kosovo as Kosovo is so important for the stability of the Western Balkans".

 

Since the end of the 1998-1999 war in Kosovo, the Serbian province has been administered by the UN. Talks, mediated by the international community, are now under way to determine Kosovo's future status as either a Serbian province with great autonomy or a f