UN ambassadors end Kosovo tour

UN ambassadors end Kosovo tour

As the UN mission members were touring the northern part of Orahovac inhabited by 400 Serbs that remained in the town, women and children blocked their way demanding that the delegation see the only street where Serbs in Orahovac can move freely, and an improvised cemetery where they bury their loved ones.

Serb residents hailed Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin chanting “Long live Russia”, “Kosovo is Serbia”, “We were born here, we will die here, but we won’t give Kosovo away.”

The Serb representatives attending the meeting said they were not satisfied with the organization of the UN Mission’s visit to Orahovac.

Coordinator for Orahivac and Velika Hoča Dejan Baljošević told B92 that Serb representatives had little time to show the UN ambassadors their plight.

Baljošević said he warned the UN mission that Kosovo Serbs would leave Kosovo if the province became independent.

“We hear foreign politicians say that violence will flare up in Kosovo if it falls short of gaining independence and see it as instigating,” he said.

“Such statements spell intimidation for the remaining Serbs in Kosovo, all the while advising Albanians what to do if their demands were not met,” Baljošević explained.

Following the visit to Orahovac, the UN ambassadors went to the Albanian village of Mala Kruša near Prizren, that saw the killing of more than 100 Albanian men the day after the onset of the NATO bombing campaign in 1999.

"The delegation is welcome here," said Arsim Shehu, who lost 40 members of his extended family. "We hope they will verify what the Serbs did here... We can't live with them any more."

The mission's last stop before heading back to Vienna has been the village of Brestovik near Peć, a place where displaced Kosovo Serbs began returning to their homes.

The ambassadors of the fifteen UN Security Council member states met Friday with representatives of international missions operating in Kosovo and Kosovo’s interim institutions in Priština. They also talked to representatives of the Serb community in Kosovo.

Johan Verbeke, Belgian Ambassador to the UN and head of the mission, said that the meeting with Kosovo Serbs’ representatives “was of an immense importance”, as the mission members obtained information regarding the situation in northern Kosovska Mitrovica and northern Kosovo as well.

“As you all know, our mission is set to gain as much information as possible so as to get a complete overview of the situation in the province,” Verbeke told the press.

The UN delegation chief did not want to speculate as to the possible outlines of the report the mission is expected to draft following the visit to Kosovo.

Association of Serb Municipalities chairman Marko Jakšić said that Kosovo Serb representatives told the UN delegation what was happening to the Serbs in Kosovo.

“We have said that the 1999 bombing of Serbia was not aimed at protecting the rights of Kosovo Albanians, but at creating another Albanian state. We stressed that as many as 200,000 Serbs have been banished from Kosovo and none of them have, to date, returned,” Jakšić said.

He added that Kosovo Serbs were not satisfied with Martti Ahtisaari’s plan arguing that “the decentralization within the independent Kosovo cannot assure sufficient guarantees to the Serb community, given that Serbs in Kosovo lived like Indians on a reservation.”

Following their visit to Priština, the UN mission continued to Gračanica where they met with Serb List representatives Ranđel Nojkić and Vesna Jovanović.

They talked about “a lack of protection mechanisms to ensure the safety and protection of the Serb community within Kosovo’s interim institutions,” Radio KiM reports.

The UN ambassadors also met with bishop Artemije of the Raško-Prizrenska eparchy.

“We have tried to depict the genuine situation in Kosovo with reference to Serbian people and other non-Albanian communities, which for the last 8 years have been living a life unworthy of a human being,” he said.

"We also talked about crimes inflicted upon us, and our churches and monasteries,” the bishop added.

Serb National Council representatives Rada Trajković and Dragan Velić also attended the meeting with the mission, along with Belgrade negotiating team coordinators Slobodan Samardžić and Leon Kojen.

The visit to Gračanica was the first “field trip” of the mission, which then continued to both southern and northern parts of the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica.

The UN delegation Friday also stopped at the village of Svinjare, a Serbian village that was ravaged in the March 17, 2004, riots in Kosovo and subsequently restored.

The mission will leave Kosovo this afternoon and travel to Vienna, where it will hold a meeting with Martti Ahtisaari to discuss the Special Envoy's proposals in light of the mission's  findings, as the UN delegation chief had said ahead of its arrival to Kosovo.