Vladimir Putin: "Decisions on Kosovo should be of universal nature"

REGNUM (RUSSIAN FEDERATION), 16:10 30.01.2006

 

Decisions on Kosovo should be of universal nature - such is the position of Russian President Vladimir Putin before the meeting of the international Contact Group on Kosovo in London, in which Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will participate. "It is a very important issue for us, not only in terms of maintaining the international law principles, but being guided by practical interests of the post-Soviet territory. All variants that will be worked out by the Contact Group must be of universal nature. Not all the conflicts are settled in the post-Soviet territory. We cannot follow the way when we use some principles in one place and other principles in another one," said Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers.

 

US representative, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Rosemary DiCarlo has announced her position in an interview to the Russian Kommersant daily: "We believe that the situation in Kosovo and Kosovo itself are a unique phenomenon." The situation in Kosovo was a result of forced collapse of Yugoslavia, thinks DiCarlo. So, the international community has undertaken measures to stabilize the situation in Kosovo, because Milosevic violated the UN Security Council Resolution #1244. As for a possible settlement of other frozen conflicts in accordance with the Kosovo model, UN resolutions were not applied to them, stressed the US official.

 

President Putin has noted on the point today: "Some our partners tried to put on paper the assumption that Kosovo is a unique phenomenon and does not cause any precedents . we all understand what this unique nature results in."