Belgrade Media Highlights, May 22

US policy criticized (Politika/Tanjug)

Apart from verbal accusations by the State Department and the Congress, the US has done little towards settling the state-of-affairs in Kosovo and Metohija following the March events, assessed Lawrence Azl, the Chairman of the International Religious Freedom Watch (IRFW). In a Christian Science Monitor article he underlined that the “anti-Serb and anti-Christian pogrom had occurred before the eyes of 20 000 NATO peace keepers who proved unable or unwilling to protect the Serb minority.”

The conversation of the deaf (Politika/Tanjug)

Belgrade, Pristina and the UN have so far conducted the conversation of the deaf, assessed the Director of the International Crisis Group James Lyon, and stressed that, unfortunately, none of those three sides presented yet serious plans for Kosovo, reports VOA Radio. Lyon explained that, instead of the plan for Kosovo, three-year-old ideas of decentralization and cantonization were heated up.

Holkeri again in hospital over exhaustion (Glas)

UNMIK Head Harri Holkeri will not be dismissed, but the UN SG will appoint another SRSG if Holkeri is not able to return to Pristina for health reasons. From New York comes the news that Irish diplomat Richard Spring will arrive at the helm of UNMIK instead of Holkeri, but no one in UNMIK has been able to confirm this to us. According to Glas, Holkeri himself considers he will, nevertheless, be able to continue to perform his duty in Kosovo and Metohija, where he came in August last year. At the moment, Holkeri is in Finland, where he went for consultations with the doctors. Some time ago he started complaining that he was tired, because of which he had already been in Finland. Upon return to Pristina he was treated by French doctors, but he decided to go to Finland for consultations with the local doctor since, as he said, he couldn’t understand the French.

Gathering “Albanians and their neighbors” (Vecernje Novosti/Beta)

Albanian political representatives from Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Serbia’s south and Macedonia have jointly assessed in Lucerne that Kosovo’s unresolved status is the cause for many problems in the region, Beta was told by the co-minister for returns in the Kosovo government Milorad Todorovic, who is also the participant of the gathering  “Albanians and their neighbors” that began in Switzerland. “Obvious is the intention of Albanian representatives to impose Kosovo’s unresolved status as the cause for all problems in the Balkans, mentioning it as a problem that should be resolved as a priority,” said Todorovic and assessed that “everything resembles blackmail that without the right of Albanians to resolve the status there is neither the realization of the rights of other communities to resolve their problems.”

Karamanlis against change of borders over Kosovo (Danas/Beta)

Greek Premier Kostas Karamanlis said in Washington on Friday that he told President George Bush that borders must not be changed over Kosovo, and that both of them were worried over the situation there. At a press conference at the end of the five-day official visit to the US, Karamanlis stated that he mentioned Kosovo in talks with Bush, but didn’t convey what Bush told him about that. “I consider that the concern over Kosovo is mutual, and our stand, brought forward to President Bush as well, is that the development of the situation must not in any case reach the change of borders,” said Karamanlis, and added he thought there was accord regarding this.

First wedding in Pec Patriarchate after five years (Blic)

The first wedding has been performed in the Pec Patriarchate after five years. Gordana Pasic from Pec and Branko Colovic from Cacak married in church on Ascension Day. Part of the nine-member group started from Belgrade, and it was escorted by UNMIK from the boundary line between Serbia proper and Kosovo. The reception in the Pec Patriarchate was magnificent. The monastery’s sisterhood, headed by mother Fefronija, has joyfully welcomed the guests in the churchyard full of different flowers.