Kfor chief praises Kosovo Protection Corps, Serb villagers' cooperation

Viti [Vitina], 14 June: The commander of the peacekeeping forces in Kosova [Kosovo] [Kfor, Kosovo Force], General Yves de Kermabon, said today that the TMK [Kosovo Protection Corps] had made significant progress regarding multiethnicity, which is also one of the standards.

The Kfor commander made these comments in the village of Verboc [Vrbovac] near Viti, where he and the TMK commander, General Agim Ceku, visited the members of the 363rd TMK Brigade, who are helping the Serb community in this village on a project to clear the riverbank.

Gen Kermabon repudiated distortions of his statement two days ago about the TMK's fulfilment of the standards. "It was a misunderstanding or misinterpretation, when it was said that the TMK had not fulfilled the standard of multiethnicity. This is not true because I can say that the TMK has made significant progress in this respect, but it has not fulfilled it in full," he explained.

"I am very happy with what I see here not because the Serbs of this village have asked the TMK to help them but because of the harmony in which the work on this project is being done," Gen Kermabon said. Gen Kermabon said that this cooperation was going to help the TMK in fulfilling Standard 8.

Praising the work of his soldiers on this project, Gen Agim Ceku said that the Serb citizens of Verboc had asked the TMK to help them. "This is an honour for us because they trusted us and we will help them, as we have done before," Ceku said.

Sasa Marinkovic, coordinator of the village, said that the village trusted the TMK and that was the reason why they had decided to carry out this project with the TMK. He thanked them for the work that they were doing to help the village residents.

"As ordinary citizens, we used to live together before the war and I believe that we can live together after the war. That is why we do not mind accepting help from the TMK," Marinkovic said.

The work on the Morava riverbank is a joint project of the TMK and the Serb residents of Verboc and is one of the many projects that this TMK Zone has realized so far.

Source: KosovaLive web site, Pristina, in Albanian 14 Jun 05