PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro, May 13 (AFP) -
Talks slated for later this year on the possible independence of Kosovo could be postponed without faster progress on UN-set democratic standards, the NATO chief said Friday.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer issued the warning to Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, which is demanding independence from Serbia, during a trip to the southern province.
"We have seen some encouraging signs but there is a lot do. If there is no more concrete progress ... in meeting the standards the process may be postponed," he told reporters.
A NATO air campaign in 1999 against the forces of then Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, now facing war crimes charges at The Hague, ended a bitter conflict between Serbian troops and Kosovo Albanian separatist guerrillas.
Kosovo remains technically part of Serbia but NATO has almost 20,000 troops in the province and it has been under UN administration since the war.
The ethnic Albanian-dominated government has been promised the UN would review its progress toward meeting UN-set benchmarks of democracy and human rights in June.
If progress is deemed satisfactory the world body would begin talks with all parties on Kosovo's future status -- whether it will become independent or remain part of Serbia.
NATO has been heavily criticised for failing to stop three days of organised anti-Serb riots in the province in March which killed 19 people and drove thousands of people from the minority community out of their homes.
Scheffer said that in talks earlier Friday with Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova and Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi he had stressed the importance of minority rights and the involvement of Serbs in Kosovo institutions.
"The world is watching Kosovo as the standards evaluation comes closer. Any extremism and violence will set back the process and will not be tolerated," he said.
He also urged expanding an ongoing, technical-level dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina on "practical issues" such refugees and energy.
"Political talks between Pristina and Belgrade must begin and they must be talks not only on technical matters," he said.
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9 comments:
One year since 50000 people were rioting and made a shame of themself to the whole world, Rugova declines to meet Tadic, maximum high level criminality, all five permanent member states of the Security Council must vote yes....and they still think that they will have independence....Good luck !
You have some nerve speaking of shame. Or perhaps you want to rub-off some of the shame the serbs carry with them for the most ravage attrocities committed in the last decade. Ten years of war in the Balkans carry one insigator behind: Serbs. This is something you should think about before you attack people who riot to protest what they do not like.
You challenge independence as if it were yours to decide. In a free Europe, and a free world, it is difficult to be on the side of the anti-independence movement because in fact what is happening is a correction of a long overdue mistake.
I am sure you know what I am referring to.
Six years since Serb police & troops murdered, raped, robbed and ethnic cleansed in a rampage across Kosova and Belgrade is just now sending some of their criminals to the Hague. And amny of the Serb people still do not grasp what their fellow Serbs did in Kosova. See how those in charge treat their war crminals like heroes? The international community will never consent to put Kosova back under Belgrade in any meaningful way.
jadan je taj narod vas
I do not know who is "jadan" here you or us. Your sole purpose in visiting this site is to follow up with this "jadan narod". It seems to me that you are enfatuated with this "jadan narod". Thank god we have admirers like you watching in the sidelines.
Blago nama
MALISEVO, Serbia and Montenegro, May 14 (Reuters) - United Nations forensics experts are exhuming bodies presumed to be Serbs from a mass grave in the Kosovo town of Malisevo, the second such find in a month, officials said on Saturday.
"There are multiple remains of bodies and at least two complete bodies," said Marcia Poole, spokeswoman for the U.N. mission which has run the Balkan province since the 1998-99 war.
"They are presumed to be Serbs missing since 1998."
A second U.N. source told Reuters: "There are six or seven bodies, and counting." He said some had been found with their hands tied.
Some 3,000 people are still missing from the conflict between Serb security forces and ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas. The vast majority are ethnic Albanians but around 500 Serbs are also missing, feared killed by the rebels.
Marked with tape, the grave site is behind a hospital 100 metres (yards) from the main road in the former rebel stronghold of Malisevo, 45 km (30 miles) southwest of the capital Pristina.
A Jordanian U.N. police unit is guarding the area.
In late April, the U.N. mission said it had exhumed the remains of 22 Serbs from a cave in the western Klina region.
NATO intervened in the Albanian-dominated province in 1999, bombing Serbia for 78 days to drive out Serb forces accused of killing 10,000 Albanian civilians and expelling 800,000.
Six former rebels, including former Kosovo prime minister Ramush Haradinaj, are charged by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague with abducting and killing Serb civilians and so-called Albanian "collaborators".
Serbs and Kosovo Albanians met in March in Belgrade to discuss the issue of missing persons for the first time in a year. The U.N. source said the latest grave finds were not directly related to the resumption of the dialogue.
The subject remains a major obstacle to reconciliation in the province of 2 million people. The West hopes to open talks in the autumn on whether Kosovo becomes independent or remains formally part of Serbia.
^^ i was gonna post that too!you beat me to it! But no, im not following this "jadan narod", because whether u call it Kosovo Kosova or dsfjsdfa;df, its still a serbian province, therefore im following my own nation.
soldier on pathetic martyr.
Yet Belgrade refuses to return the bodies of more than 3000 thousand innocent Albanian civilians that are burried in Serbia. Continuing their criminal activities even after murdering their victims.
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