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KiM Info Newsletter 07-06-06 Kosovo and Serbian officials sign protocol on refugee returns Associated Press: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 9:56 AM PRISTINA, Serbia-Kosovo and Serbian officials and the U.N.'s top official in the province signed an agreement on Tuesday pledging to create safe and fair conditions for the return to Kosovo of tens of thousands of Serb refugees and other minorities displaced by the 1999 war. The agreement commits the sides to securing conditions for the voluntary return of those who fled the conflict in Kosovo, such as physical and material security, freedom of movement, return of property, reconstruction of burned homes and equal employment opportunities, according to a copy obtained by The Associated Press before the signing ceremony. The signing is a rare indication of agreement between Serbia and Kosovo and comes at a sensitive time for the province. On Monday, local Serbian officials in the northern part of Kosovo said they would sever ties with provincial institutions that are dominated by the ethnic Albanian majority, following a number of incidents they blame on ethnic Albanians. A Kosovo Serb hardline leader, Marko Jaksic, in a statement to The Associated Press, insisted Tuesday the boycott was not designed by the Serbian government in Belgrade, but was a decision taken by the local Serb leaders in the northern part of the province. Jaksic also suggested possible creation of Serb vigilante groups to guard Serb-populated villages, if attacks continue against the minority group, a move similar to those of Serb communities in Croatia when Yugoslavia began to unravel in the early 1990s. "This is our autonomous decision, a result of a disastrous security situation over the past seven years," since NATO bombing forced Serbia to hand over control of Kosovo to the U.N. mission, he said. At the end of the Kosovo war, more than 200,000 Serbs and other minorities streamed out of Kosovo, fearing revenge attacks after a NATO air war ended a Serb crackdown on the province's independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. So far, international and government-led efforts to return Serb refugees and those displaced within the province have produced little result, which increases fears of territorial division along ethnic lines. U.N. officials running Kosovo as its future status is negotiated have made the refugees' return a priority, requiring fair treatment of the Serb minority a condition of the ethnic Albanian quest for independence. The protocol, aimed at increasing the numbers of returning refugees, was signed by top U.N. administrator Soren Jessen-Petersen, a Kosovo government representative leading talks on the returns, and a Serb government official participating in the return efforts, the U.N. said. The signing of the agreement has been pending for nearly a year as the two former foes disagreed over the content. The document provides for the return of all displaced people to their homes, but it also allows them to go to other places of their choice in the province. Nearly seven years after the end of the war, the ethnic groups remain divided, with Kosovo Serbs mainly living in isolated enclaves fearing attacks by ethnic Albanians. Talks to determine Kosovo's future are under way in Austria. Western envoys hope that some form of solution will be found by the end of 2006, which should primarily ensure the well-being of minorities, particularly Serbs. NATO, U.N. beef up forces in north Kosovo BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, June 6 (UPI) The United Nations is looking to increase the number the police in northern Kosovo to stem potential ethic violence. NATO's Kosovo protection forces moved to beef up their presence in the Serbian province, the Albanian language Zeri daily reported Tuesday. In recent months, three Serbs were killed in the area and Serbia's government accused the U.N. administration of tolerating the incidents and demanded higher protection for Serbs. NATO forces have announced they will be returning to their base close to the administrative border with Serbia, and now the U.N.-led police will follow suit, Zeri reported. Serbs, who want Kosovo to remain a province of Serbia, and ethnic-Albanians, who are seeking an independent Kosovo, have been meeting to decide who will govern Kosovo, whose population is 90 percent ethnic-Albanian, once NATO and U.N. personnel leave.
NATO, KFOR sources say base in northern Kosovo being reactivated
NATO and KFOR sources confirmed that a deserted base in northern Kosovo was being reactivated to accommodate "a certain number of KFOR troops during operations that are regularly conducted in northern Kosovo," to facilitate these operations and make them "more flexible." NATO officials in Brussels declined to comment on media reports that KFOR was reactivating its base in Leposavic in anticipation of a wave of Serbian refugees and "a Kosovo Serb rebellion," in the event that Kosovo declares independence. Very reliable international sources in Brussels, however, told BETA that NATO was predicting a mass and complete exodus of Serbs from enclaves within Kosovo in the event of a forced declaration of independence, which both Kosovo Serbs and Belgrade oppose. If this happens, Serbs can be expected to proclaim their own self- administration in northern Kosovo, i.e. independence from the majority Albanian part of Kosovo and to hook up with Serbia proper via the administrative line. Kosovo Serbs have little trust in KFOR after its failure to shed light on the events of March 2004 and are consequently "preparing to defend themselves in a similar situation that could result from a forced decision on Kosovo's independence, meaning a solution that will violate the vital rights and interests of Serbs," according to Brussels' analyses. Serbs of northern Kosovo move closer to secession: analysts TRIBUNE DE GENEVE (SWITZERLAND) Serb enclaves in northern Kosovo have taken a step towards separation from the rest of the ethnic Albanian-dominated province by cutting ties with the UN administration, media and analysts said Tuesday. "The north is aiming towards a total secession" from Kosovo, influential daily Koha Ditore wrote, while one foreign analyst warned it was the "joker in the pack" for ongoing talks on the future of the province. On Monday Serb leaders in the north of the UN-run province broke off relations with the UN mission (UNMIK) and declared a "state of emergency" The leaders, backed by Serbian authorities in Belgrade, have said that should Kosovo become independent, as its ethnic Albanian majority demands, they want the northern enclaves to secede and be attached to Serbia. But another Kosovo Serb leader, Marko Jaksic, said the decision was primarily directed to the boycott of Kosovo institutions, dominated by ethnic Albanians, notably the government of the province. "This decision is a product of bad security situation in the past seven years. We had to say stop to the terror finally," Jaksic told the Belgrade-based Beta news agency. However, he insisted that the decision "has nothing to do with the negotiations" over the future status of the province. "It should not have any influence on the talks," said Jaksic. Since February Serbian and Kosovo Albanian officials have been engaged in the UN-sponsored talks -- expected to be wrapped up by the end of the year -- but they have made little progress. The ethnic Albanian leaders are pushing for independence, which the Serbian government fiercly opposes although it has offered Kosovo greater autonomy. "Kosovo is entering its most critical phase. I am afraid the north won't be controlled by Pristina any longer," Behxhet Shala, analyst at a Pristina-based human rights watchdog, said. "The north is going to make any outcome of the status talks totally dysfunctional. Moreover, given the momentum of the secession there, I wouldn't exclude more dramatic developments," he said. "Certainly, north Kosovo is becoming one of the biggest challenges of the status process talks," Alex Anderson, head of the Pristina office of the International Crisis Group think-tank, told AFP. "I think there is an awful lot of work on the ground to make good the (UN's) insistence that there will be no partition of Kosovo," Anderson said. "In the context of the coming status definition the north is an unpredictable part of Kosovo -- in a way like a joker in the pack," he added. The Koha Ditore newspaper said that the movements in the north had been received with "political silence in Pristina", while another independent daily, Zeri, reported that the news had drawn concern from the UN administration in Kosovo. Belgrade and Kosovo Serb leaders have complained for years that the NATO and UN missions running Kosovo have failed to ensure security for non-Albanians, pointing to constant small-scale attacks and a major anti-Serb rampage in 2004. In a series of attacks against Serbs in the past 10 days, one man was killed and two were seriously injured. The UN police commissioner said the latest incidents did not seem to be ethnically motivated. UN officials rarely comment on the motive for attacks against Serbs, citing a lack of evidence. Anderson said the NATO-led peacekeeping mission appeared to be concerned at the Serbs' secession moves, and had announced the reopening of a base near Leposavic, a Serb-dominated town bordering the rest of Serbia. "A lot of security concerns are going to shift to north Kosovo," At least one third of Kosovo's some 100,000 Serbs are thought to be living in and around the volatile northern town of Kosovska Mitrovica, which is divided between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. The others live in enclaves throughout the province. Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and NATO since mid-1999, when an alliance's air war drove out Serbian forces and ended a brutal crackdown against separatist guerrillas from the ethnic Albanian majority.
Zvecan murder and wounding in Priluzje not ethnically motivated
UNMIK Police Commissioner Kai Vitrupp said on Monday that Sundays wounding of a Serb woman in Priluzje and last week's murder of a Serb man in Zvecan, are not ethnically motivated crimes, and that the investigations on the both cases are underway. He said at the press conference that yesterday's wounding of a Serb woman happened as a consequence of shooting in wedding celebrations that was near the house of the victim, and that a built hit her accidentally while she was working on her yard. In a press release it is said that the investigations are going on also on the case of the murder in Zvecan stressing that there is no evidence to describe it as an ethnically motivated crime. THE JAPAN TIMES PRAGUE -- Serbia's long tragedy looks like it is coming to an end. The death of Slobodan Milosevic has just been followed by Montenegro's referendum on independence. Independence for Kosovo, too, is inching closer. The wars of the Yugoslav succession have not only been a trial for the peoples of that disintegrated country; they also raised huge questions about the exercise of international justice. Do international tribunals of the sort Milosevic faced before his death promote or postpone serious self-reflection and reconciliation in damaged societies? Do they strengthen or undermine the political stability needed to rebuild wrecked communities and shattered economies? The evidence on these questions is mixed. Indeed, the record of the International War Crimes Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), based in The Hague, may be instructive in judging the credibility of the strategy of using such trials as part of the effort to end civil and other wars. In 13 years, the ICTY, with 1,200 employees, spent roughly $ 1.25 billion to convict only a few dozen war criminals. Moreover, whereas members of all ethnic groups committed crimes, in its first years, the ICTY indicted and prosecuted far more Serbs than others, fueling a perception, even among opponents of Milosevic's regime, that the tribunal was political and anti-Serbian. We may regret that Milosevic's own trial ended without a conclusion. But a conviction only of Milosevic, however justified, without parallel penalties for his Croat, Bosnian and Kosovo-Albanian counterparts would hardly have contributed to serious self-reflection within the post-Yugoslav nations. To be sure, the arrest of Gen. Ante Gotovina, adored by many Croats as a hero, but responsible for the brutal expulsion of a quarter-million Serbs from Croatia and northwest Bosnia -- the biggest ethnic cleansing in Europe since World War II -- improves the ICTY's standing. But Milosevic's Croatian and Bosnian counterparts, Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izetbegovic, respectively, remained unindicted when they died. So, too, the main commanders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK). Ramush Haradinaj, the prime minister of Kosovo, was accused but later released from detention. I have always been convinced that Milosevic should have been put on trial in Belgrade. After all, Milosevic's critics and political rivals such as the journalist Slavko Curuvija and Milosevic's former mentor, Ivan Stambolic, were assassinated by Serb police agents, who also tried three times to murder the opposition leader Vuk Draskovic. There was, moreover, ample evidence of corruption among Milosevic's inner circle, including members of his immediate family. Holding the trial in Belgrade might have served better to catalyze a sober examination of the past. The atmosphere was certainly favorable. The majority of Serbs hold Milosevic responsible for the decline of their society. Even before his fall, the opposition controlled most big Serbian cities, and in 2000 he lost the election that he called to shore up his authority. The relatively small turnout at his funeral confirmed that only a minority of Serbs considers him a national hero. Meanwhile, with the exception of Slovenia, the democratic transformation in the post-Yugoslav region remains uneasy. Wars, ethnic cleansing, embargoes and sanctions created not only psychological traumas, but also black markets, smuggling, large-scale corruption and de facto rule by mafias. The bombing of Serbia by NATO in 1999 heavily damaged its economy, with serious consequences for neighboring countries. The definitive end of what remains of Yugoslavia may -- at least today -- pose no danger of war, but the Muslim Sandjak region will now be divided by state boundaries, and Albanian extremists, with their dreams of a Greater Albania, believe their influence in a separate Montenegro will be reinforced with a yes vote on independence. Most Serbs and Croats in Bosnia believe that the best solution to the problems of that sad country would be to join the territories that they inhabit with their "mother" countries. Then there is the unresolved status of Kosovo, where the Albanian majority demands independence, and extremists threaten to fight for it. As one Kosovo Liberation Army commander warned, "If we kill one KFOR soldier a day, these cowards will leave." With independence, the extremists would gain a territorial base from which to undermine Macedonia, southern Montenegro, and southern Serbia, jeopardizing stability in the entire region. Serbia is offering Kosovo the formula "less than independence, more than autonomy." It demands security guarantees for the Serbian minority and cultural monuments, as well as control of the borders with Albania and Macedonia to stop traffic in arms, drugs and women, and to prevent the use of Kosovo by Albanian extremists. Any resolution of Kosovo's status is problematic, but the international community should not repeat old mistakes. In 1991, the principle that only a politically negotiated division of Yugoslavia would be recognized was abandoned. Now, as then, a change of boundaries without the consent of all concerned parties would not only violate international law, but could also lead to violence. The international community must not be gulled into thinking that war-crime trials marginalize, rather than mobilize, extremists and nationalists. Jiri Dienstbier was foreign minister of Czechoslovakia and special rapporteur of the UNHRC in the Balkans.
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