Kosovo negotiating team establishes advisory council of communities

Excerpt from report by Kosovo Albanian television KohaVision TV on 9 December

[Announcer] All the needs of the minorities will be integrated in the process Kosova [Kosovo] is currently undergoing, through a common platform; it was said after the first meeting of the Advisory Council of Communities. Veton Surroi, chairman of the Council, after meeting Turkish and Egyptian [Roma] communities separately, said the protection of minority rights should be one of constitutional categories in Kosova.

[Reporter] The purpose of the Advisory Council of Communities is to integrate the realistic needs of the minority communities into the Kosova negotiation process. Head of the Council is Veton Surroi, member of the Kosova negotiating team. He held the first meetings, separately, with the Turkish and Egyptian communities. They gave Surroi the lists of their requests dealing with the use of mother tongue and education. This way their needs would be included in the documents that would be drafted during the negotiation process, as well as after the resolution of the status which will be independence, said the chairman of the Council, Veton Surroi.

[Veton Surroi] I purposely said integration of needs instead of integration of minorities because it is hard to ask Mahir [Yagcilar, Turkish Democratic Party of Kosova chairman] to integrate here, where he has been living for 30 years; the communities that traditionally are part of Kosova's identity. We only wish to integrate that part of its identity into a legal framework of the future independent Kosova.

[Reporter] Surroi announced the establishment of a common platform for minorities in Kosova. [Passage Omitted]. According to Surroi the meeting with the Serb minority will take place on Monday and this has already been confirmed. [Passage omitted]