“Government has no plan for Kosovo”

BELGRADE Former Belgrade team head Borislav Stefanovic believes that the new government has no plan for Kosovo and that it is only trying to buy time with a consensus. Stefanovic, who is a high ranking official of the opposition Democratic Party (DS), told weekly Novi magazine that the government first called for a general consensus but that they now defined it as a consensus among parliamentary parties. “Government has no plan for Kosovo” “We will support the proposal if it refers to concrete, realistic steps that will have to be unpopular, I must stress. The consensus should be reached on issues that are on the agenda – telecommunications, energy and northern Kosovo,” he was quoted as saying. According to him, consensus on telecommunications should solve two big issues – Kosovo’s code and Telekom Srbija’s property south of the Ibar River. The third issue is a status of our provider in Kosovo in the future. “We were talking about all that for months, we had a strong, professional team and we more or less managed to agree on everything except for the country code. According to the rules of the International Telecommunications Union, we are the only ones who can give Pristina a country code. They want a number that is different from ours, 381, and we offered them 3815. The number five is an addition, symbolically it is a special number but it is also a sub-number of our country code 381,” Stefanovic explained. “Telekom Srbija’s property south of the Ibar River has been destroyed and a special problem is how Telekom will function in the future because if it is a privately-owned company, it will open a new dimension,” he added. The former team chief said he did not know what the new government would do but stressed that the previous government had offered to register Telekom in Pristina, pay taxes and function normally on condition to keep its cell phone prefix code 064 which had been unacceptable to them. He pointed out that the energy issue represented a special “point of disagreement” since important energy facilities were located in northern Kosovo, primarily Valac and Gazivode, and that Pristina, backed by the EU, requested from Serbia to recognize Kosovo as a separate energy entity. “If we do not do this, there can hardly be any progress in any part of this complicated topic and this actually tells us how these so-called technical topics are in fact political. This is why the announced raising of the negotiations to a political level represents only raising the level of negotiators, the topics are already political,” Stefanovic believes. He once again stressed that “there has been no secret agreements”, that the agreements had not been signed because it would represent the recognition of Kosovo and added that the status of northern Kosovo needed to be defined. “According to many in northern Kosovo, we were not good and true Serbs, now they have true Serbs but as far as I can see, the trust is slowly melting away because these new ones need to start telling the truth. The biggest problem is that the government representatives are not trying to explain to people in the north that they need to talk to the Albanians and not with the language of ultimatums,” Stefanovic concluded. Borislav Stefanovic (Beta, file) Tanjug Novi magazin

“Government has no plan for Kosovo”

“We will support the proposal if it refers to concrete, realistic steps that will have to be unpopular, I must stress. The consensus should be reached on issues that are on the agenda – telecommunications, energy and northern Kosovo,” he was quoted as saying.

According to him, consensus on telecommunications should solve two big issues – Kosovo’s code and Telekom Srbija’s property south of the Ibar River. The third issue is a status of our provider in Kosovo in the future.

“We were talking about all that for months, we had a strong, professional team and we more or less managed to agree on everything except for the country code. According to the rules of the International Telecommunications Union, we are the only ones who can give Priština a country code. They want a number that is different from ours, 381, and we offered them 3815. The number five is an addition, symbolically it is a special number but it is also a sub-number of our country code 381,” Stefanović explained.

“Telekom Srbija’s property south of the Ibar River has been destroyed and a special problem is how Telekom will function in the future because if it is a privately-owned company, it will open a new dimension,” he added.

The former team chief said he did not know what the new government would do but stressed that the previous government had offered to register Telekom in Priština, pay taxes and function normally on condition to keep its cell phone prefix code 064 which had been unacceptable to them.

He pointed out that the energy issue represented a special “point of disagreement” since important energy facilities were located in northern Kosovo, primarily Valač and Gazivode, and that Priština, backed by the EU, requested from Serbia to recognize Kosovo as a separate energy entity.

“If we do not do this, there can hardly be any progress in any part of this complicated topic and this actually tells us how these so-called technical topics are in fact political. This is why the announced raising of the negotiations to a political level represents only raising the level of negotiators, the topics are already political,” Stefanović believes.

He once again stressed that “there has been no secret agreements”, that the agreements had not been signed because it would represent the recognition of Kosovo and added that the status of northern Kosovo needed to be defined.

“According to many in northern Kosovo, we were not good and true Serbs, now they have true Serbs but as far as I can see, the trust is slowly melting away because these new ones need to start telling the truth. The biggest problem is that the government representatives are not trying to explain to people in the north that they need to talk to the Albanians and not with the language of ultimatums,” Stefanović concluded.