Contact Group on Kosovo
The Contact Group will meet in Vienna to determine the next steps in the Kosovo status negotiations. Belgrade-Ahtisaari feud continues.
Thursday, 31.08.2006.
11:27
Contact Group on Kosovo
Ahtisaari’s chief spokesperson Hua Jiang told B92 that Ahtisaari will not apologise for his statements because he never mentioned the collective guilt of the Serbian people.“The statement was taken out of context and poorly presented. He never mentioned the collective guilt of the Serbian people. Ahtisaari spoke of the historical legacy, that every nation should have the courage to face its own past. There is no reason for Ahtisaari to offer an apology and that is not going to happen.” Jiang said.
The Serbian Government responded by publishing a document which the Serbian Kosovo status negotiation team had sent to Ahtisaari in early August. The letter states that Ahtisaari literally said that the Serbian people are to blame for the Kosovo crisis and that all members of the negotiation delegation can confirm that.
Regardless of the recent bickering, UN officials are continuing to prepare the continuation of the discussions. In light of these preparations, the Serbian discussion team met with UNOSEK decentralisation experts this morning.
Meanwhile, it was announced that the Serbian government will demand the clarification of the UN Kosovo Envoy’s statement on the Serbs’ collective guilt from the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. The Kosovo Coordinating Center chairwoman Sanda Rašković-Ivić held a press conference after the government session, and expressed her expectation that Annan, “renowned for fighting racism and discrimination”, would not support the statement accusing an entire people of being guilty. “To say that Serbs are guilty as a nation, that any nation is guilty as such, is one of the basic assumptions of fascism and it cannot be overlooked”, she said and added that the entire negotiating team is demanding Ahtisaari’s apology.
Janjić: Serbian side overreacted
“Ahtisaari gave an unclear statement, which can be interpreted in many ways, and it showed that he does no understand the context and the lack of political sophistication that the people his is talking with possess. The Serbian side overreacted, which probably shows that Belgrade has a problem with explaining to its people the humble results that it has achieved in the discussions thus far. All in all, I think that Belgrade has immersed itself in propaganda activity that will not help its cause.” Janjić said.
“Several propaganda bombs, like the one about the division of Kosovo, and the attack on Ahtisaari, before that, the attack on Albert Rohan, regardless of whether they are justifiable political interest behind them, have turned out a negative image of Belgrade. Belgrade must realise that it is entering the discussions with too many burdens and one of them is the negative prejudices against Serbia and Serbian politics. If these prejudices are encouraged by the reiteration of Milošević’s vocabulary, which is what is being done now by some future ambassadors, first the members of the negotiation team, and then the international community, will start to react according to old tactics.” Janjić said.
“These tactics say that on one side stands the international community, which is not allowed to admit an error, and did not do much anyway, and on the other side stands Belgrade, which is identical to Milošević. The international community then says that it must punish Milošević. In short, Belgrade will not strengthen its position in the eyes of the Contact Group this way, nor will it receive the support of the public, if it is battling the part of the public that supports the Radicals.” Janjić said.
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