UN chief worried about obstacles in Kosovo dialogue

UN chief worried about obstacles in Kosovo dialogue

In the latest UNMIK quarterly report which the U.N. Security Council will review on May 16, Guterres said that the EU-mediated Belgrade-Pristina dialogue "is the best available instrument for a peaceful resolution of differences to each side's benefit."

He said that practical execution of agreements reached in the dialogue had been "extremely slow" in the observed period from Jan. 16 to April 15.

Not one concrete step was taken toward establishing the Community of Serb Municipalities, while steps being taken to end the integration of the judiciary in Kosovo's north have been postponed, the report states.

Guterres said that the rise of ethnic and nationalistic sentiments was cause for serious concern, adding that measures that encouraged ethnic divisions did not contribute to the better life of people and stability in the region.

The report points to the first event that marked the previous period as Kosovo President Hashim Thaci's attempt to transform Kosovo's security forces into an armed force by changing the law, not the Constitution, which had stirred up a controversy and elicited strong opposition from Kosovo Serbs, Belgrade and the international community, especially the US and NATO.

The report also states that Daut Haradinaj, an MP of the opposition Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, threatened war and "an ethnically clean Kosovo," if his brother Ramush, who was in custody at the time in France, was extradited to Serbia, which encountered the strong condemnation of the international community and president of Kosovo.

Serbian Minister of Justice Nela Kuburovic will represent Serbia at the Security Council session and is expected to speak on a statement by former OSCE verification commission chief in Kosovo William Walker that he was working on a project for unifying all Albanians, in Kosovo, Albania and the diaspora.