| ["Preventing wars or bringing justice doesn't fill the UN or anybody's bank accounts," ] The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) -Canada | |
| The Hague Tribunal: The Political Economy of Sham Justice Carla Del Ponte Addresses Goldman Sachs on Justice and Profits By Edward S. Herman | |
| November 20, 2005 | |
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On October 6, 2005, Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), gave a talk before an audience at Goldman Sachs in London that throws light on the role of the ICTY as well as the character and qualities of Ms. Del Ponte and her efforts. [1]
Speaking before this business audience, Ms. Del Ponte emphasized that the ICTY and other UN organizations are not profit-making bodies, but that they, and the ICTY specifically, facilitate profit-making for others. "Preventing wars or bringing justice doesn't fill the UN or anybody's bank accounts," she said. The private sector can't carry out these functions. But Ms. Del Ponte claims that such services not only save lives, reduce human suffering and destruction, they also help bring stability: "This is where the long-term profit of the UN's work resides. We are trying to create stable conditions so that safe investments can take place." This will make for "a reasonably prosperous democracyŠa factor of peace and stability in the world."
In trying to sell the ICTY to this business group as a partner or servant of neoliberalism, Del Ponte runs into the difficulty that the actual work of her organization has been highly destabilizing, did not "save lives" or diminish human suffering and destruction, and that it has left its main areas of intervention--Bosnia/Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, and Kosovo-- in a state of semi-permanent crisis and with conditions singularly unattractive to private investment (except for the drug and sex trades, which thrive in Kosovo). [2] On the other hand, insofar as the ICTY contributed to the real ends sought by Clinton, Blair, and other major NATO powers, which included helping NATO celebrate its 50th anniversary in 1999 and showing that NATO still had a role to play, as a U.S.-dominated organization; destroying an independent and socialist-inclined Yugoslavia and bringing its constituent parts into the NATO orbit of influence; and preparing the ground for further "humanitarian interventions," [3] the ICTY could be said to be an agent of the dominant Western powers and therefore of neoliberalism broadly viewed.
In her opening remarks, Del Ponte says that the ICTY is tasked with "bringing peace, security and justice," but shortly thereafter "peace" and "security" fade out and she asserts that "our primary objective is to bring justice." Justice ranks high, she says, because it "contributes to the reconciliation between peoples who have been torn apart by the wars of the nineties." Before I explain why this is a fallacy, especially with justice perceived in the one-sided and highly politicized fashion of Del Ponte, the ICTY and NATO, it should be recognized that there may be a conflict between pursuing "justice" and "peace." It is no coincidence that just as the work of the ICTY has been associated with chronic instability in the ex-Yugoslavia, so also its work ran parallel with both outbursts of ferocious local warfare and closely linked Western wars of intervention in those areas, and certainly failed to contribute to "peace." In fact, an excellent case can be made that the ICTY's focus on "justice" was well suited toavoiding peace, and that its very design was to facilitate war, a dismantling of Yugoslavia, and a specific attack on Serbia.
This case is made compellingly by Michael Mandel in hisHow America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity (Pluto Press, 2004), where he points out that the formation of the ICTY was immediately preceded by a December 1992 speech by the U.S. State Department's Lawrence Eagleberger, who named three top Serb leaders who needed to be brought to justice, and stated explicitly that "the international community must begin now to think about moving beyond the London [peace] agreement and contemplate more aggressive actions." [4] Even before this, the United States had sabotaged the promising Lisbon agreement of February 1992 by encouraging Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic to withdraw and break the plan that the Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and (previously) Izetbegovic, had accepted. [5] Following Eagleburger's talk, in February 1993, as Lord David Owen wrote bitterly, ""We have more or less got a peace settlement but we have a problem. We can't get the Muslims on board. And that's largely the fault of the Americans, because the Muslims won't budge while they think that Washington may come in on their side," so that in reality "the Clinton people block it." [6] These crucial facts and informed judgments did not interfere in the least with the established view that it was Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs, seeking a "Greater Serbia," that made peace unattainable.
The role of the ICTY in this peace-sabotage business was to indict Serb leaders in order to demonize them and make them ineligible for any peace negotiating process-in Mandel's words, the ICTY function was to help the Americans "justify their intention to go to warŠby branding their proposed enemies as Nazis." [7] As presiding judge Antonio Cassese said at the time regarding Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, "Let us see who will sit down at the negotiating table now with a man accused of genocide." [8] Later, in the 1998-1999 run-up to the NATO bombing war on Yugoslavia, the ICTY turned unremitting attention to denouncing Serbs, and as Mandel points out, its work in this period "had nothing to do with trying and punishing criminals, and everything to do with lending crucial credibility to NATO's cause." [9] During the 78-day NATO bombing war, which began on March 24, 1999, the ICTY served as an aggressive public relations arm of NATO, most dramatically in indicting Milosevic in May 1999 just as NATO was drawing criticism for extending its bombing targets to Serbian civilian facilities. In short, the ICTY, serving as an arm of NATO, helped prevent peace settlements in the Bosnian conflict in the deadly years 1992-1994, and helped justify and sustain NATO's 1999 assault on Yugoslavia.
This ICTY service was based on structural facts: the institution was created by the NATO powers, with the United States in the lead; it was funded heavily by these powers and closely allied NGOs (Soros's Open Society Institute); it was staffed with NATO country personnel, often seconded to the ICTY, and its high officials were vetted by NATO-power leaders; and it depended on NATO for information and police service. But this meant that NATO itself would be exempt from "justice," and that it would be difficult to bring to justice NATO clients, even if they committed crimes similar to or even worse than those committed by Serbs. Mandel points out that when he presented the ICTY prosecutor with a three volume dossier and complaint on NATO war crimes in May 1999, it took a year for the prosecutor to decide to reject this application, without ever having made a formal investigation, whereas in the case of the alleged Racak massacre, attributable to the Serbs, the prosecutor declared this a war crime and rushed into action on the very same day, based solely on information supplied her by the U.S. representative in the scene, William Walker. [10] Of the leaders in the Balkan wars, Clinton, Blair, Izetbegovic and Tudjman have never been indicted by the ICTY, only Milosevic, although on the logic applied in the Milosevic prosecution, an equal or better case could be made for each of the exempted leaders. [11]
This highly politicized justice brought by the ICTY not only served war rather than peace, it cannot be regarded as justice at all. Justice that is not even-handed is deeply compromised. And if it is clearly serving a political end and meeting an external political agenda it is almost certain to be biased and fail to bring justice even in dealing with politically eligible targets. If it is politically corrupt it will do its work corruptly and bend its supposed judicial process to meeting those same political aims. This has been evident throughout the ICTY's operations-in the case of the numerous indictments that met a NATO political or PR need of the moment (e.g., the indictment of the Serb paramilitary leader Arkan in March 1999, just as the NATO bombing commenced; Milosevic in May 1999, just as NATO's bombing of civilian sites was creating a PR problem), its steady resort to publicity that compromised supposed judicial proceedings, and with endless illustrations of judicial malpractice in the ICTY proceedings themselves. According to Michael Scharf, an ICTY supporter, over 90 percent of the evidence brought forward in the Milosevic trial was hearsay, [12] all freely admitted into the record by the judge, although almost none of it had any connection with proving orders or the sanction of war crimes by the man on trial (and all of which could be readily duplicated for Bosnian Muslim and Croat treatment of Serbs or U.S. bombing attacks on the Serbian civilian infrastructure). It did, however, set a tone in creating a moral environment of target demonization that served NATO political aims, even if it compromised the possibility of a fair trial.
From a steady stream of cases, the absence of judicial equity may be illustrated by the fact that with William Walker on the stand for the prosecution, Judge Richard May never interrupted him once as he ranged far and wide, even covering his view of Milosevic's "general attitude"; and although the "Racak massacre" claim was the basis of 45 charges of murder against Milosevic, and Walker was a key driver of that claim, May gave the defendant a fixed time limit for questions and interrupted his questioning over 60 times in the process of preventing a serious cross-examination. Athough allowing a stream of hearsay from prosecution witnesses, Judge May refused to permit Milosevic to enter into the record articles fromLe Monde andFigaro that raised serious doubts about the Walker version of events at Racak. [13]
With General Wesley Clark testifying for the prosecution, the judge allowed the U.S. government to force a closed session and to redact the testimony before release, he permitted Clark to talk about anything he pleased, including ten minutes of self-adulation (without judicial interruption), and he was permitted to phone Bill Clinton to request a letter of support, contrary to the stated rule that no outside communication was permitted in the midst of testimony; whereas Milosevic was not permitted to ask questions challenging Clark's credibility or anything not directly responsive to Clark's verbal claims. [14] More recently, during the defense's presentation of its case, the ICTY judge allowed the prosecution to present a video of an alleged killing of six Bosnian Muslims back in 1995, although it had no bearing on the ongoing questioning of the defense witness and was presented without prior notice to the defense, which was not permitted to question the video presentation. However, introduction of this video did serve to dramatize claims about the Srebrenica massacre at a time when that event was being given tenth anniversary memorial publicity by the Western establishment.
Del Ponte states authoritatively in her Goldman Sachs talk that 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were slaughtered at Srebrenica in the "only genocide" in Europe since World War II. The 8,000 figure was given by the Red Cross back in July 1995 based on crude and unverified estimates of 3,000 captured by the Bosnian Serbs plus 5,000 initially claimed to be "missing." It was very soon recognized by the Red Cross and other observers that several thousand of the "missing" had escaped to Bosnian Muslim lines and to Yugoslavia itself, and that several thousand more were almost surely killed in fighting. But that 8,000 number withstood not only this needed correction, but also the fact that fewer than 3,000 bodies were found in the Srebrenica area, [15] with an unknown but probably large fraction killed in the savage July 1995 fighting or earlier. Belated claims of reburials lack plausibility, and run into the problem that although Madeleine Albright warned the Serbs that "We will be watching you," no satellite photos have ever been displayed publicly showing digging, burying, or trucks moving bodies. In short, the stable figure of 8,000 rests on a propaganda need that has sustained a politically convenient myth-inflation, supported by the combination of NATO officials, the mainstream media, and the ICTY. [16]
Del Ponte's claim in her Goldman Sachs speech that this was a case of "genocide" follows a pattern of ICTY findings and conclusion that don't withstand the slightest scrutiny and even suffer from internal contradiction. ICTY judges repeatedly stated as an established fact that 7-8,000 Muslim men had been executed, while simultaneously acknowledging that the evidence only "suggested" that "a majority" of the 7-8,000 missing had not been killed in combat, [17] which yields a number substantially lower than 7-8,000, plus uncertainty. Can you have "genocide" in one small town? The judges suggested that pushing the Bosnian Muslim inhabitants out of the Srebrenica area while killing many males was itself genocide, and they essentially equated genocide with ethnic cleansing.
The Tribunal dealt with the awkward problem of the genocide-intent Serbs busing Bosnian Muslim women and children to safety by arguing that they did this for public relations reasons, but as Michael Mandel points out, failing to do some criminal act despite your desire--in this case entirely unproven and resting on an ideological/political premise of ICTY personnel--is called "not committing the crime." [18] The Tribunal never asked why the genocidal Serbs failed to surround the town before its capture to prevent thousands of males from escaping to safety, or why the Bosnian Muslim soldiers were willing to leave their women and children as well as many wounded comrades to the mercies of the Serbs; and they failed to confront the fact that 10,000 mainly Muslim residents of Zvornik sought refugee from the civil war in Serbia itself, as prosecution witness Borisav Jovic testified.
It is notable that the ICTY has never called Operation Storm, the August 1995 Croatian ethnic cleansing of some 250,000 Krajina Serbs, "genocide," although in that case many women and children were killed and the ethnic cleansing applied to a larger area and larger victim population than in Srebrenica. It was also preceded by an earlier series of Croatian army attacks, first on the Serbian villages of Medak, Citluk and Divoselo in the UN- protected Krajina region back in 1993, in which a hundred or more unarmed civilians were slaughtered, and then in the brutal ethnic cleansing trial run for Operation Storm with "Operation Flash" carried out in Western Slavonia in May 1995 with many hundreds killed. There was no ICTY response to any of these major death-dealing operations, even though a UN dossier was submitted to the ICTY that described the 1993 crimes. [19]
The ICTY's extreme bias and politically-based double standard in treating Srebrenica and Krajina is dramatically evident in Del Ponte's discussion of the two cases before the Goldman Sachs audience. In the Srebrenica case, she transmits without question a corrupted interpretation of the word genocide and an inflated and unproven number of victims, and mentions no context, such as the fact that Srebrenica had been the base of Bosnian Muslim commander Naser Oric who had sallied forth from 1992 into 1995 in Serb massacre and destruction forays that left well over a thousand dead Serb civilians.
Her treatment of Operation Storm and the Krajina massacre makes an enlightening contrast and is worth quoting at length:
"Another typical case is Ante Gotovina. This Croatian general was indicted in 2001 for crimes committed against Serbs in 1995 [Operation Storm]. Over 100 were killed and a hundred thousand forced to leave their homes while their houses were looted or destroyed. These crimes were committed in the course of a military operation, undoubtedly legitimate as such, aimed at re-taking the part of Croatian territory which was occupied by Serb forces. The operation was a success, and Croatians remember it as one of their finest hours. Gotovina was one of the commanders and, quite naturally, he is revered as a hero. The mere mention of the war crimes committed in the course of the operation was taboo for years. . The logic was: only enemy forces committed war crimes, defenders were innocent by definition. It is only recently that the government has acknowledged that, yes, crimes were committed, and those responsible for these crimes, including Gotovina, must be tried in The Hague." This is straightforward apologetics for ethnic cleansing, with a number of omissions and serious misrepresentations of fact. She never mentions that Krajina had been a UN protected area, like Srebrenica, brazenly violated by the Croatians in 1993; nor does she mention the May 1995 Operation Flash assault in which the Croats killed many hundreds of Serb civilians. She doesn't mention the fact that the UN continued to urge a negotiated settlement of the Krajina dispute, ignored by the Croats in the massive attack of August 1995. She says that these crimes "were committed in the course of a military operation," but so were the Srebrenica crimes, and in fact Srebrenica was defended (and abandoned) by a military force relatively stronger than the Krajina Serbs had maintained. Her statement that the Krajina operation was "legitimate" because it was "aimed at re-taking the part of Croatian territory which was occupied by Serb forces" gives this operation an apologetic context that involves serious lying-this was a carefully planned campaign, not mainly to remove "Serb forces"-relatively weak in Krajina and arguably there to defend a civilian population against Croatian army massacres such as occurred earlier at Medak and in Operation Flash-but to remove the Serb civilian population that had lived in that area for centuries. This was deliberate ethnic cleansing, but Del Ponte cannot admit the fact in this case. Can you imagine Del Ponte saying that the Serb attack on Srebrenica was to "remove Bosnian Muslim forces," or that the Serb operations in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999 were to "remove KLA forces"? Serb actions are invariably ethnic cleansing, Croatian actions of comparable or greater anti-civilian scope are merely "military operations," never ethnic cleansing, in accord with a clear political agenda.
Further misrepresentations are her statement that "over 100 were killed," and that "a hundred thousand" were "forced to leave their homes." Just as she swallowed the inflated 8,000 for Srebrenica, so here Del Ponte grossly underestimates the toll of the politically inconvenient victims. The Serb human rights organization Veritas estimated that 1,205 civilians were killed in Operation Storm; [20] and their list of victims included 368 women and children--the Croats didn't bus women and children to safety as did the genocidal Serbs at Srebrenica. Operation Storm may well have involved the killing of more Serbcivilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica massacre: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians (only one of 1,883 bodies in the graves around Srebrenica was identified as female). [21]
As to numbers expelled, even conventional studies give a figure of 200,000 or more for those driven out of Krajina. [22] Del Ponte strives to minimize these numbers because 250,000 civilians ethnically cleansed is hard to explain away as merely part of a "military operation" to deal with "Serb forces." In contrast with her usual dramatizing of Serbian violence, Del Ponte uses gentle language in describing Croatian actions: the 100,000 were "forced to leave their homes," not "deported," "driven out," or "ethnically cleansed" as she and her allies would describe comparable Serb actions. She provides no details on the impressively ruthless Croatian actions, such as: "UN troops watched horrified as Croat soldiers dragged the bodies of dead Serbs along the road outside the UN compound and then pumped them full of rounds from the AK-47s. They then crushed the bullet-ridden bodies under the tracks of a tank." [23]
So for De Ponte this massive ethnic cleansing of civilians was reasonably seen by Croats as "one of their finest hours," because it was a military success, though some incidental "war crimes" were committed; whereas she would never suggest that the Bosnian Serb capture of the better defended Srebrenica was a creditable military success of which Serbs might properly be proud-any such success was unmentionable in the face of war crimes, and she berates the Serbs because one-third allegedly don't believe war crimes were committed at Srebrenica. She gives an apologetic context to Operation Storm to give it legitimacy; whereas she never mentions the Srebrenica background of Bosnian Muslim killings of Serbs that might suggest a vengeance motive and interfere with the ideological/political premise of pure unprovoked evil. The double standard, based in good part on misrepresentation of the facts, is gross.
Del Ponte notes that Croatian General Ante Gotovina was indicted in 2001 for war crimes in Operation Storm, but a number of questions arise: Why did it take six years after the event for Gotovina to be indicted, whereas Bosnian Serb General Mladic and President Karadzic were indicted within days of the Srebrenica massacre and before the facts of the case could be minimally verified? Why has NATO never sent military forces into Croatia to capture Gotovina as they have done on several occasions in Bosnia and Serbia seeking Mladic and Karadzic? Could this indictment have been connected to the seizure of Milosevic and the need to give the appearance of balance? Why was Croat President Tudjman not indicted for these war crimes, in parallel with Milosevic (who the ICTY has striven mightily and unsuccessfully to link to the Srebrenica massacre, whereas Tudjman's link to Operation Storm is clear)? Why were Clinton, Albright and Holbrooke not indicted for documentable approval and support for Operation Storm? [24]
The answers to these questions, and the key to Del Ponte's double standard and misrepresentations, clearly rest on the fact that the massive ethnic cleansing operation by the Croats in Krajina was carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support, whereas the Serbs were the targeted U.S. enemy. [25] Thus, just as NATO was exempt by virtue of the structure, control and purpose of the ICTY, so also are the leaders of client states, though a few bones like Gotovina may be thrown (belatedly, and with lackadaisical enforcement) to provide a not very convincing aura of fairness.
A key theme in Del Ponte's speech was the importance of "justice" for bringing reconciliation to the area. The guilty must be brought to trial and punished; the victims and/or their heirs must feel that justice has been done to their victimizers in order to be reconciled and ready for peace. This principle is not applied in cases like Indonesia in East Timor, where a U.S. and British ally engaged in mass murder; and of course it would never even be thought of where the United States and its British ally committed aggression and killed large numbers of civilians, as in Iraq.
It has also not really been applied by the ICTY in its work in the ex-Yugoslavia, where the ICTY's selective "justice" has shown its true face as vengeance and a cover for political ends. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was by no means one-sided, and deaths by nationality were not far off from population proportionality; [26] the Serbs claim and have documented thousands of deaths at the hands of the Bosnian Muslims and their imported Mujahedeen cadres, and by the Croatians, and they have their own group examining and trying to identify bodies at an estimated 73 mass graves. [27] This victimization has hardly been noticed by the Western media or ICTY -- the distinguished Yugoslav forensic expert Dr. Zoran Stankovic observed back in 1996 that "the fact that his team had previously identified the bodies of 1,000 Bosnian Serbs in the [Srebrenica] region had not interested prosecutor Richard Goldstone." [28] Instead, there is a steady refrain about the Serbs tendency to whine, whereas Bosnian Muslim complaints are taken as those of true victims and are never designated whining. Thus the question never arises for Del Ponte and her allies (including the Western media)--if "justice" is required for "reconciliation," what is to reconcile the victims and heirs of the thousands of Serb victims of the ethnic cleansing wars, such as the thousand or more killed and 250,000 expelled from Croatian Krajina, if their claims are ignored? Won't they be even more embittered by a one-sided pursuit of justice?
Apart from this double standard on the need for justice as a means for producing reconciliation, the claim that ICTY justice will serve that end is fraudulent anyway. Rather than producing reconciliation the steady focus on Srebrenica victims and killers has made for more intense hatred and nationalism on the part of those supposedly obtaining justice, just as the Kosovo war and its violence exacerbated hatred and tensions there and showed that Clinton's claimed objective of a tolerant multi-ethnic Kosovo was a fraud. In Kosovo, this one-sided propaganda and NATO control has unleashed serious and unremitting anti-Serb (along with anti-Roma, anti-Turk, anti-dissident-Albanian) violence, helped along by the willingness of the NATO authorities to look the other way as their allies -- the purported victims -- take their revenge and pursue their long-standing aim of ethnic purification.
In Bosnia, a British foreign office proposal to use the tenth anniversary commemoration of the Srebrenica massacre for a "statesmanlike initiative" of public reconciliation among the different groups reportedly received short shrift from Bosnian representatives on all sides. [29] David Chandler points out that "the international community's focus on the war has given succour to the most reactionary and backward political forces in Bosnia," and that "those most socially excluded from Bosnian life have been able to dictate the political agenda and oppose the politics of reconciliation, because their social weight has been artificially reinforced by the international dominance over the politics of this tiny state. Without political, social and economic dependency on external actors that are legitimized by the idea of Bosnian victimhood, it is unlikely that the war would have remained so central in Bosnian life." [30]
Inboth Bosnia and Serbia, not to mention Kosovo where they are still under assault after a major bout of ethnic cleansing, the Serbs have been under steady attack, humiliated, and their leaders and military personnel punished, while those who stand accused of crimes among the Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and NATO powers, with minor exceptions suffer no investigation or penalties and may even be portrayed as dispensers of justice.The record strongly suggests that the objectives of the retribution-pushers are not justice and reconciliation - - in addition to straightforward vengeance, they are to unify and strengthen the position of the Bosnian Muslims, to crush the Republica Srpska, and possibly even eliminate it as an independent entity in Bosnia, to keep Serbia disorganized, weak and dependent on the West,to provide the basis for the formal removal of Kosovo from Serbia, and to continue to put the U.S. and NATO attack and dismantlement of Yugoslavia in a favorable light. The last objective requires diverting attention from the Clinton/Bosnian Muslim role in giving al Qaeda a foothold in the Balkans, Izetbegovic's close alliance with Osama bin Laden, his Islamic Declaration declaring hostility to a multi-ethnic state, the importation of 4,000 Mujahadeen to fight a holy war in Bosnia, with active Clinton administration aid, and the KLA-al Qaeda connection. [31]
In sum, the ICTY was created by the NATO powers, not to bring either peace or justice to Yugoslavia, but to serve the U.S. and NATO aims there, which called for the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, the crushing of Serbia, and the conversion of the new mini-states of the ex-Yugoslavia into NATO-power dependencies. As the Serbs were the main obstacle to this program, they had to be demonized, their leaders driven from office and incarcerated, and their people humiliated and punished. This called for an ICTY focus on "justice" (selective) that helped demonize and provided the justification for undermining peace settlements and making war. The ICTY has performed this service effectively, with the help of a gullible and patriotic Western media and intellectual class. The trial of Milosevic and continued pursuit of Mladic and Karadzic are the final efforts of the ICTY: the latter to justify continued pressure on the Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia and Montenegro, the former to prove that the NATO wars were based on justice, and both to put "humanitarian intervention" by the imperial powers in a good light. Carla Del Ponte and the ICTY have been useful instruments of these ends.
Notes 1.http://www.un.org/icty/pressreal/2005/speech/cdp-goldmansachs-050610-e.htm
16. See Edward Herman, http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=74&ItemID=8244 Politics of the Srebrenica Massacre," ZNet, July 7, 2005. 24. See footnote 11.
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November 22, 2005
ICTY: The Political Economy of Sham Justice
In Kosovo, Two Peoples Look Across Bitter Divide
["If Kosovo walks off, why will the Serb Republic stay put?" ]Washington Post, November 22, 2005
In Kosovo, Two Peoples Look Across Bitter Divide
By Daniel Williams, Washington Post Foreign Service
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro -- Six years after the end of warfare here, fear and suspicion still enforce a strict separation of Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, but for the first time both sides are beginning to picture a future in which they might -- just might -- live together.
Talks began Monday in Pristina on the future legal status of an area that has been under the administration of the United Nations since U.S.-led bombing forced out Serbian forces in 1999. Anti-Serb riots in March 2004 stoked fear here and in foreign capitals of new violence between the two populations, and possibly even between Serbia and Kosovo, prompting the U.S. and European governments to endorse the talks.
"This is about ending a dispute of more than a century," said Avni Arifi, an adviser to Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi. "The only way to move forward is to talk. Otherwise anything can happen, mostly bad."
"It's time to show some political maturity and do something about this conflict," said Sanda Raskovic, an official in Belgrade who will be part of the Serbian negotiating team.
Martti Ahtisaari, a former Finnish president who was appointed by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to mediate the talks, arrived by air Monday in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, to open a round of shuttle diplomacy aimed at finding common ground. Officials in Pristina and Belgrade, the Serbian capital, say they will eventually sit down and speak directly.
NATO began its bombing campaign in 1999 in response to the killing of Albanian civilians during a Serb crackdown on Albanian separatist guerrillas. Despite six years of U.N. administration, Kosovo remains officially a province of Serbia.
The Albanian majority demands full independence. Serbia wants to keep Kosovo within its territorial bounds, albeit with substantial autonomy. "Kosovo is part of Serbia, and not only part of its history but also part of its present and future," Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told parliament in Belgrade on Monday.
The United States and European governments will wield strong influence in the negotiations. Many analysts predict they will eventually pressure and cajole the two sides into accepting a status being called "conditional independence."
Under such a framework, Kosovo would formally separate from Serbia, but would remain for an extended period under some type of international supervision, with foreign peacekeeping troops continuing their patrols, as in nearby Bosnia, where a U.S.-brokered peace deal initialed 10 years ago ended another of the Balkans' ethnic wars.
The talks represent a dramatic shift in course for the outside powers. After 1999, they told the Albanians that talks on final status would begin only if they improved the rule of law and the protection of Serbs in Kosovo. But after the riots of 2004, in which Albanian mobs torched close to a thousand Serb houses, foreign officials concluded that the current framework was untenable. They authorized talks while continuing to pressure the Albanians to rein in lawlessness.
A visit to Kosovo shows how stagnant and yet volatile the situation is. The majority population of 2 million Albanians and the minority Serbs, now numbering about 100,000, live in separate, mutually hostile worlds. A bridge over a river that separates Serb and Albanian parts of the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica carries little traffic. Sharp-eyed men on both sides warily look over anyone who crosses.
The Serb population of Pristina is down to 120 from about 40,000 in 1999. Serbs' homes have been occupied by Albanians. The few Serbs who dare come into town complain of harassment.
In the countryside, a few Serb enclaves remain, surrounded by Albanian villages and subject to the whims of illegal Albanian militias. Few refugees have returned. Recently, a shadowy armed group called the Army for the Independence of Kosovo ordered Kosovo politicians to declare independence or face a "difficult situation," which people here took to mean death. Another group opposes talks altogether and has spray-painted the slogan "No negotiations. Self-determination" all across Pristina.
Still, the decision to talk has forced contemplation among Serbs and Albanians about what a new Kosovo would be like.
Nikola Bejovic, an artist and one of the few Serbs who still lives in Pristina, said, "They will talk and talk, but anyone who thinks this will be over in a year is dreaming."
Bejovic lives in a suburb and has not been downtown for a year. The last time he visited, he recalled, he spoke Serbian and someone clubbed him on the head. He ended up in a hospital.
People at the talks "will try to come up with something that will satisfy everyone," he predicted. "It will be like a magic trick. When the Albanians look at the solution, it will look like independence. When Serbia looks at it, it will seem like something else."
Bejovic, 56, moved to Pristina 33 years ago after meeting his future wife, Armi, now 51, an Albanian who was born in Pristina. She said Serbs and Albanians both consider her a freak: "When I am in Serbia, they call me names. When I am here, they call me names. This is a stupid place."
In downtown Pristina, Ehup Ahmeti, an 18-year-old Albanian, sells cigarettes out of a crate. He says independence is on the way and wonders where that will leave him. "These cigarettes are going to be the same whether we're free or not," he said. "The real reason we need independence is because we cannot live with the Serbs."
Ahmeti's family came to Pristina from central Kosovo after the war "because our house was burned down and there were plenty of Serb apartments here."
He had expected Kosovo to be independent long ago. "I thought that's what the war was about," he said. "There's no way there can be any other solution. Really, the Serbs ought to go back to Serbia. . . . A few can stay, but really, there was a lot of killing. They should not come back."
Independence is one topic that is not supposed to come up when Serbs and Albanians address each other directly during the talks, both sides say, though for entirely opposing reasons.
"This we only discuss with the international community," said Arifi, the adviser to Kosovo's prime minister. "We have trust that the solution is obvious."
The Kosovo negotiating team intends to talk about practical issues: war reparations, pensions to Albanians dating to before the war, land records held in Belgrade, border controls, rights to fly commercial planes through Serbian airspace and the treatment of the Serb minority within Kosovo. "We recognize they have an interest in Serbs living here, as we do for Albanians living there," Arifi said.
Arifi said Kosovo was prepared to offer compromises to smooth the way to independence. It would agree to international peacekeeping troops remaining within its borders and to foreign monitoring of human rights. It would pledge never to unify with either Albania or the Albanian communities in Macedonia to the south. "This is not something we wanted to do anyway," Arifi said.
Independence for Kosovo is also not on Serbia's agenda because in Belgrade's view, it would violate international law and roil the Balkans. At the war's end, the Serbs point out, U.N. Security Council Resolution 1422 said that Kosovo was legally part of the former Yugoslavia.
The Serbian government is willing to agree to "substantial autonomy" for Kosovo to run its own affairs and for Serbs there to have autonomy within the province. "The schools must be local, the sheriff must be local," said Sanda Raskovic, a member of the Serbian negotiating team.
Foreign governments that help oversee Kosovo have good reason to reject independence, she conjectures. Declaring Kosovo a sovereign state would set an example for other conflictive places, notably Bosnia, where the central government insists that the country's semi-autonomous Serb Republic eventually integrate fully into the Bosnian state.
"If Kosovo walks off, why will the Serb Republic stay put?" said Raskovic. Serbian officials raise the specter of a domino effect worldwide: Chechnya, parts of Macedonia, Taiwan, all breaking their moorings.
There's yet another party to the talks, self-declared, the Serbs of Kosovo, who officially form part of the Belgrade delegation.
"It is our future they're talking about, yet somehow we are not quite at the center of things," said Oliver Ivanovic, a Serb leader in Mitrovica. "In any case, we do not just want to be puppets of Belgrade. . . . We don't really trust Belgrade. We think the Albanians want to get rid of us and the internationals don't care.
"We're the orphans here," he said. "But we have to participate."
Serbia is ready
KiM Info Newsletter 22-11-05
Serbian Parliament Adopts Resolution on Kosovo
Belgrade, Nov 21, 2005 – Members of the Serbian parliament adopted today the Resolution on the mandate for political talks on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija, submitted to the parliament by the Serbian government.Out of 234 members of the parliament in attendance, 205 voted in favour of the Resolution, and 29 witheld from voting.
Serbian PM says Kosovo must remain within Serbia
BELGRADE, Nov 21 (Reuters)
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica on Monday ruled out independence for the U.N.-run province of Kosovo, saying talks about to begin on its future must find a solution within the territorial integrity of Serbia.
Addressing parliament at a session to adopt guidelines for the talks, Kostunica said the 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority should have a wide autonomy.
"Kosovo is part of Serbia, and not only part of its history but also part of its present and future. Today we are deciding about Serbia itself, about ourselves," Kostunica said.
U.N. envoy Martti Ahtisaari was due in Kosovo on Monday to start shuttle diplomacy aimed at reconciling the mutually exclusive visions -- Serb insistence on sovereignty and Albanian demands for outright independence.
"We know there is a huge gap," Kosovo's U.N. governor Soren Jessen-Petersen told reporters in Pristina, the capital.
"The very fact that the two sides are so far apart, and in my opinion will remain quite far apart for a long, long time, would suggest that prolonging this process for a long, long time will only maintain the status quo. The two sides are far apart, will remain far apart," he said.
Kostunica said the talks would be "complex and difficult". Serbia would be guided by two principles -- readiness to find a compromise and a just solution and rejection of any imposed solution which would wrest away part of its territory.
VIOLENCE
Kosovo has been a de facto U.N. protectorate since 1999 when Serb forces were driven out by 78 days of NATO bombing aimed at halting their two-year counter-insurgency war against Albanian guerrillas in which some 10,000 civilians were killed.
Kostunica said Albanian secessionists had shown their true colours in the six years since the U.N. took over, by using all means to achieve their final goal of an independent Kosovo.
"Since then, there has been a deliberate, planned and organised policy of ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Kosovo, and not only Serbs but all other non-Albanians," Kostunica said.
"An independent Kosovo for Albanian secessionists means a mono-ethnic, and solely Albanian state," he said.
The 100,000 Serbs who stayed on in the province after about as many fled in 1999 would also have to be given their own autonomy within an autonomous Kosovo, the premier said.
The impatience for independence of the majority Albanian population of some 2 million has fuelled sporadic, sometimes explosive violence against the remaining Serbs. In March last year widespread rioting took Kosovo's 17,000 NATO-led peacekeepers by surprise. Nineteen people were killed.
"An independent Kosovo would mean that ... violence, violation of human rights, ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide pay," Kostunica said.
"It would put in question many widely accepted values and undermine the foundations of the world order. No one should mistake the possible consequences of such a precedent."
No official time limit has been placed on the talks, but the aim is clearly to obtain a solution by mid-2006, say diplomats. The risk of violence can also not be excluded.
"We know there are crazy people out there on both sides, Jessen-Petersen said. "We know there will be provocations. We are well equipped to respond to any provocations."
The Prime Minister addressed the parliament at todayÂ’s session devoted to the Draft resolution on a mandate for political talks on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija.
Kostunica said that todayÂ’s session of the Serbian parliament bears historic significance, since it is devoted to the discussion on a resolution that will determine the future of the country and all its citizens.
He pointed out that Kosovo-Metohija is part of Serbia, not just of its past, but its present and future as well. “What we are discussing here today is Kosovo-Metohija, our people, our territory, our tradition and culture – in fact our very roots and identity”, recalled the Prime Minister. “Therefore, esteemed representatives of people, today we discuss Serbia itself and our very lives. Such grave decisions are put in front of the highest representative body of a country only in its crucial moments. I have no doubt that we all understand the character of this moment as well as the significance of the decision the parliament needs to reach”, said the Prime Minister.
“At the very beginning, esteemed members of parliament, it is of crucial importance to put forward our position by adopting the resolution, and that implies two key things. First, that Serbia is ready, capable and determined to reach a compromise and historically just solution to the Kosovo-Metohija issue, and second, that Serbia is equally determined to reject, unquestioningly and permanently, any attempt of imposing a solution and seizing a part of its territory.
“That means that Serbia firmly supports compromise, justice and observance of international law and order. We strongly believe that those principles are ironclad and superior to all kinds of legal violence and use of force as argument in general. As legal violence and use of force are not considered arguments at all, the principles we rely on are, without exception, those that lie at the core of the international order and that all democratic countries in the world consistently abide by and uncompromisingly defend when their existence is at stake”, Kostunica stressed.
The Prime Minister pointed out that SerbiaÂ’s task in the upcoming talks on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija will be manifold and added that the existence of independent Kosovo would deprive of sense and invalidate basic principles upon which Serbia and whole international order rest.
“Independent Kosovo would actually show that violence, ruthless violation of human rights, ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide are acceptable means of achieving one-sided and exclusive aims”, warned the Prime Minister and added that the existence of independent Kosovo would challenge many common values and undermine the very roots of international order.
According to the Prime Minister, in the framework of an existing international order, independent Kosovo would openly challenge the principles that lie in its core. He pointed out that it would not only represent the violation of sovereignty and territorial integrity of states, but basic principles of human and minority rights as well.
The Prime Minister stressed that Serbia with due right insists on the highest possible form of autonomy for Kosovo as the only form that promises a compromise, permanent and peaceful solution, and that a policy of Serbia, regardless of the use of different terminology, is summarised in the position that the Serbian community must have autonomy within the essential autonomy of Kosovo-Metohija.
Kostunica recalled that the UN Security Council, at its session held on October 24, reached a decision to start talks on the future status of Kosovo-Metohija, respecting Resolution 1244, and added that there is not a single word in the text of the resolution that would even hint at the possibility of Kosovo independence, either conditional or unconditional.
In the Prime MinisterÂ’s opinion, Resolution 1244 undeniably represents the basis for resolving the issue of KosovoÂ’s future status and therefore it is of crucial importance that the document, on one hand, explicitly confirms sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia in Kosovo-Metohija and on the other, does not hint at the possibility of self-determination.
The Prime Minister recalled the exile of more than 200,000 Serbs and non-ethnic Albanians from the province following the arrival of international forces, the killings of non-ethnic Albanians in the last six and a half years, the devastation of orthodox objects of worship and seizure and destruction of properties of Kosovo Serbs.
“It is clear that all this is the result of violence of ethnic Albanian secessionists and their intention to sever the territory of Kosovo-Metohija from Serbia and the State Union of Serbia-Montenegro by applying constant terror”, stressed Kostunica and added that Serbia stands witness of ethnic cleansing of Serbs in the name of creating independent Kosovo.
Kostunica expressed conviction that through the position enshrined in the resolution on Kosovo-Metohija, Serbia defends not only its national and state interests, but principles and values on which peace, stability and security of the modern world rests.
Belgrade, 21 Nov (RTS) – With a large majority of votes representatives in the Serbian parliament adopted the government suggested resolution on the mandate for the political negotiations on the future status of Kosovo and Metohija.
Two hundred and five representatives voted in favor of the resolution, while 29 abstaining votes came from the Democratic Party and the Social-Democratic party.
Before the vote of confidence on the resolution, parliament was addressed by Vojislav Kostunica, premier of Serbia, after what followed a five hour discussion by parliament representatives.
Tomislav Nikolic, chief of the parliamentary group of the Serbian Radical Party, stated there cannot be Kosovo and Metohija independence, announcing that members of his political party will vote in favor of the suggested resolution even though this document should have had much harsher stances.
Nikolic announced that the 82 representatives of the Radical party will help the governing structures keep Kosovo and Metohija part of Serbia. He warned that Serbia can continue living only if it fights for Kosovo on which a decision is being made right now and that there can be “no running away from it, no withdrawal from it, or no getting away from it” which is something all of those who took power after the 5th of October including the current representatives of the governing structures should have in mind.
Right now Kosovo and Metohija is more or less in the hands of the Albanians, evaluated Nikolic, at the same time asking the government, does it have friends in the world, and which it can relay and who can guarantee fulfillment of the documents that they sign. Nikolic also warned that success of the negotiations is something of which the government president will be held accountable in front of the parliament and all of Serbia, regardless of who is part of the negotiation team.
Dusan Petrovic, chief of the parliamentarian club of the Democratic Party, stated this political party will not vote against the resolution on the mandate for the political talks on the future status of Kosovo and Metohija because this party is fighting for the future of the seven million citizens of Serbia.
Petrovic said that the idea for dividing of Kosovo into two entities within Serbia represents a starting negotiation point of Serbian president Boris Tadic.
“This is a starting negotiation position which Tadic put on the table and expects that once parliament gives the government the mandate for the negotiations, for the president of the government to come out with clear stances on this option, so that Serbia could have starting political concept for the negotiations,” said Petrovic.
Serbian president who is at the same time president of the Democratic Party, does not need parliament approval, stated Petrovic, and explained that Serbian president is “restricted by the constitution, and that through elections he won his right to lead the politics with in his jurisdiction”.
Both Serbian and Albanian entities would have joint and separate institutions and would allow both entities to live their lives in accordance with international standards, said Petrovic.
When it comes to areas such as education, health, to certain extent safety, Serbian entity would have institutional ties with Belgrade, said Petrovic, feeling convinced “citizens of Serbia are ready to enter process of reaching decision on Kosovo and Metohija”.
Ivica Dacic, chief of the parliamentary group of the Serbian Socialist Party, said this party will support the government resolution regarding Kosovo and Metohija, because its starting points lies in the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia.
“If we back down from these rules and principals, our state has a fully legitimate and moral right to ask that these principals do not apply on other territories as well. If this principal is not being followed our state should raise the issue of Republic of Srpska,” said Dacic, addressing parliament from the parliament speaking post.
Dacic evaluated that the resolution is acceptable because it has foundations in the essential autonomy and essential self governing of Kosovo and Metohija as a “form of political solution which has foundation in different resolutions of the UN Security Council”.
Veroljub Stevanovic, chief of the parliamentary group of “Nova Serbia” and “nine plus nine” which is the group of independent parliamentary representatives, stated representative of the Serbian Orthodox church should be part of the Belgrade team for the negotiation on the Kosovo status.
Asking parliament representatives that starting right now they stand by stances proclaimed by the resolution, Stevanovic said that if they act like this they will send the general public a message these are united stances and frames.
Miroljub Labus, vice president of the government, said that the G17 plus political party supports the Kosovo and Metohija resolution which is being put under discussion in the parliament, emphasizing that this is an “agreement inside the governing coalition which has a joint supplement”.
He emphasized that the resolution has two key principals, one is territorial integrity and sovereignty of Serbia and the other is protection of the human rights, adding that both are equally important.
Labus said that after a solution for Kosovo is reached there will certainly be a referendum in Serbia, adding that Serbs living in the province will also vote in their own way. “Then they will stay and peacefully live and sleep or they will start up their tractors and head out to Serbia. We have to have this in mind and enable them a peaceful life in the province,” pointed out Labus.
Labus sent Kosovo Albanians a message saying “the road to Brussels does not go through Tirana but through Belgrade”.
Natasha Micic, an independent representative, left the parliament session saying “what is going on in the parliament right now is just a show”.
Meho Omerovic, a representative of the Social-Democratic party, stated this party “will not participate in giving legitimacy to a document which would only be a political coverage for the leading coalition”.
Ahtisaari Arrives in Pristina
Belgrade, 21 Nov (B92) - The first phase of negotiations on the status of Kosovo begins today with the arrival of former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari in Pristina.
“Ahtisaari will certainly use shuttle diplomacy at first,” said the head of the UN Mission in Kosovo, Sřren Jessen-Petersen, after a meeting with Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi.
Petersen told journalists that Ahtisaari would travel to Pristina and also visit Belgrade and other places.
“I think that he will probably work like that for the first few months,” he said.
Ahtisaari had said earlier that the goal of his visit would be to gather information and because of that he also planned to visit Podgorica, Tirana and Skopje.
Marti Ahtisaari Arrived In Pristina
Pristina, 20 Nov (KIM Radio)
On Monday, Martti Ahtisaari, special UN envoy for the negotiations on the status of Kosovo, arrived in Prishtina for a two day visit.
Right before his arrival members of the “Self-determination movement” which is headed by Albin Kurti, wrote graffiti “no to negotiations” on the walls of the buildings situated in the vicinity of the main UNMIK headquarters. Members of the Kosovo police service reacted quickly in breaking up the group of around twenty people.
Ahtisaari arrived in Prishtina around 1630 hrs. Escorted by UN police right after his arrival he immediately met Sřren Jessen Petersen, the UNMIK chief. Meeting was closed for the public, and Martti Ahtisaari did not want to address the reporters.
KIM Radio unofficially reveals that on Tuesday, Ahtisaari will meet with representatives of the Albanian negotiation team, while on Wednesday he will meet with political representatives of the Kosovo Serbs. According to earlier announcements goal of his visit is to get familiar with the arguments with which all sides participating in the negotiations want to defend their positions. After his visit to Kosovo, the UN special envoy for negotiations on the province status is traveling to Belgrade.
UN envoy takes on Europe's Kosovo conundrum
PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, Nov 20 (Reuters)
United Nations envoy Martti Ahtisaari on Monday begins his mission to negotiate a way out of Europe's biggest diplomatic predicament -- the fate of Kosovo.
The veteran mediator arrives in Serbia's breakaway southern province to lay the ground for direct talks in 2006 on whether the 90 percent Albanian majority wins independence, or Belgrade retains sovereignty over land it treats as the cradle of Serb heritage.
The United States and European Union want to end more than six years of political and economic limbo since NATO bombed in 1999 to drive out Serb forces and the United Nations made the province of 2 million people a de facto protectorate.
The former Finnish president must steer a course between mutually exclusive visions of Kosovo's future "held with deep conviction and infused with nearly 1,000 years of history," U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns said this month.
Harbouring few illusions about the task in hand, Ahtisaari -- who has set up base in Vienna -- says the chances of brokering a deal are "better than buying a lottery ticket."
Officially, he has no deadline. But since summer an uptick in small bomb blasts and shootings, targeting the U.N. as well as the Serb minority, has injected a fresh sense of urgency.
Ahtisaari, 68, was the EU envoy who presented terms in 1999 to former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic to end 11 weeks of NATO bombing, in a war to drive out Serb forces who killed 10,000 Albanian civilians in a two-year conflict with separatist rebels.
NON-NEGOTIABLE
Since then, Albanian impatience with the status quo has fuelled niggling, sometimes explosive violence against the 100,000 Serbs who stayed while about as many fled after the war.
The Albanian majority, which already enjoys elements of statehood, insists independence is "non-negotiable". They say Serbia lost the moral right to rule Kosovo through years of discrimination and violent repression.
Serbia is offering broad autonomy. Carving a new state from its recognised borders would violate international law and ripple dangerously through a region of ethnic fault lines in which Albanians co-exist uneasily in Macedonia and southern Serbia.
According to polls, however, most Serbs think Kosovo is already lost. To Belgrade's dismay, two former Yugoslav republics -- Slovenia and Macedonia -- have come out and said so recently, stressing they would support independence in the interests of regional stability, a crucial factor guiding Western thinking.
Serbia's influential Orthodox Church insists Kosovo should be declared "occupied territory" if this happens, while the ultranationalist Radical Party -- Serbia's largest -- is threatening to "lead the people into the streets".
Diplomats say Western powers are willing to risk the political fallout and push for independence under a years-long EU supervisory mission, with special provisions for Serbs and their scores of centuries-old religious sites.
To mitigate the trauma, Brussels and Washington are offering a joint future for Serbia and its neighbours inside the EU and NATO within the next decade.
Finding a Serb leader ready to strike a deal will not be easy. In Russia this week to court the support of Serbia's traditional ally in the U.N. Security Council, President Boris Tadic told one newspaper: "Kosovo is not an object for sale."
Who will lead the Kosovo talks?
BELGRADE -- Monday, November 21, B92 – Sanda Raskovic-Ivic said that Serbia’s team of negotiators in the Kosovo status talks must be appointed through cooperation between the Serbian president’s and prime minister’s cabinet members.
The Kosovo Coordination Centre President said that she expects that the team of negotiators will be announced “in the coming days,” and that the appointments should be made by President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
She said that the appointment of the team is not related to the arrival of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari, stating that “he makes his own agenda.”
Raskovic-Ivic said that Ahtisaari will definitely be meeting with representatives from both TadicÂ’s and KostunicaÂ’s cabinet, as well as with Kosovo Serb officials, representatives of the Coordination Centre, and Albanian officials within the Kosovo Government.
There will be no problems with having former Yugoslav ambassador to Rome Miodrag Lekic become a part of the negotiation team, Raskovic-Ivic said, adding that this proposal was handled by the Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Affairs Ministry and should be confirmed by the executive council shortly.
Asked whether Montenegro will have a representative in the team, Raskovic-Ivic said, “In a way, indirectly, yes.”
Kostunica will form the team
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus assured reporters that, since the Serbian Parliament will adopt the resolution for the Kosovo status discussions, it is only fitting that Prime Minister Kostunica will appoint the team of negotiators.
Labus said that the adoption of the resolution is the first step which will allow the Prime Minister further authority to appoint a team for the discussions, after consulting with President Tadic and other senior officials.
The Deputy Prime Minister expects that he will be consulted as well. He said that the goal of the discussions is to make sure that the people of Kosovo can leave peacefully, and added that the adoption of the
