Kosovo Serbs say Serb municipalities are "Indian reservations"

BBC Monitoring International Reports - February 9, 2007 Friday

 

Text of report by Serbian radio on 9 February

 

[Presenter] Several thousand Serbs held a rally in the central town square of Sumadija in the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica to express their protest and disagreement with Martti Ahtisaari's proposal for resolving the province's status. The rally passed without any incidents. Here is our correspondent Zeljko Tvrdisic with the details.

 

[Tvrdisic] Marko Jaksic, a member of the Serbian Kosovo negotiating team, said that Ahtisaari's plan contained nothing good for Serbia nor for the Kosovo Serbs and when the UN envoy claims the opposite he is not telling the truth.

 

[Jaksic] They want to take away from us our hospitals and our schools and our system of payment, and they have given everything to them: their constitution, their anthem, they have given them all our land because they say it must belong to them. They have allegedly set aside five municipalities for the Serbs. Those are five Indian reservations. And it means nothing to us even if they gave us 75 municipalities, because in a criminal monster state we do not need anything. The only thing we need now is Serbia and this is Serbia.

 

[Tvrdisic] Jaksic called on the Serbs to maintain peace and unity, pointing out that Kosovo would never become independent as long as Serbia did not give its consent. Dragisa Milovic, chairman of the Zvecan Municipal Assembly, said that Ahtisaari wanted to use his plan to seize a part of the internationally recognized state of Serbia and legalize the fait accompli situation and reward the Albanians for ethnic cleansing and destroying of churches and monasteries.

 

[Milovic] They want us to have the status of ethnic minorities, to have all our links with our country Serbia severed. Are we going to allow that brothers and sisters? (Crowd shouts: "No"!) Therefore, we want to send a clear message from this rally saying, as the delegates of the Municipal Assembly of Zvecan have said, that they reject this proposal, this plan by Mr. Ahtisaari on the solution to the status of Kosovo and Metohija. We are rejecting this plan because it does not provide for a compromise, because it does not reflect the interests of the state of Serbia.

 

[Tvrdisic] Representatives of students also spoke at the rally, as well as municipal representatives of Zubin potok and Leposavic, and also Milan Jovanovic, chairman of the Serb National Council of Northern Kosmet, who reiterated that Ahtisaari's plan was unacceptable. He announced a protest rally by the Kosovo Serbs in front of the American Embassy on 27 February and the forming of a delegation that would visit the leading political structures in Belgrade in the next few days and demand a united and decisive fight for preserving Kosmet in Serbia.

 

Source: Radio Belgrade in Serbian 1400 gmt 9 Feb 07