Serbian negotiating team adopts platform for Kosovo talks

10/01/2006

Serbian negotiators led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica are calling for the establishment of Serb municipalities in Kosovo as well as constitutional and legal protections for the Serb community there.

By Igor Jovanovic for Southeast European Times in Belgrade – 10/01/06

The Pristina team's decentralisation proposal guarantees the territorial integrity of the province, Kosovo Local Self-Rule Minister Ljutfi Haziri (left) said on Monday (9 January).

Belgrade's negotiating team for the Kosovo status talks has adopted a platform and appointed a delegation for the upcoming meeting on decentralisation, to be held in Vienna. The 5 January session was the second for the team, which is chaired by Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.

The platform calls for the formation of Serb municipalities in Northern Mitrovica -- that is, northern Kosovo, central Kosovo, and southeastern Kosovo around Gnjilane and Metohija. Together, these municipalities would amount to a Serb entity.

"The existing and newly formed municipalities with a Serb majority would not be a compact territory, but would be functionally linked and thereby provide for an institutional framework for the normal life and certain survival of the Serb community in the province," the platform reads.

The document, parts of which were presented to the public Monday (9 January), also calls for the most important Orthodox Christian places of worship in Kosovo to fall within the Serb entity.

According to the negotiating team, three kinds of constitutional guarantees and legal protections should be provided for the Serb community. Firstly, its position must be "defined in a manner that will not give any constitutional or legal grounds to the Albanian majority to treat Serbs as a minority or to impose on the Serbs any solution that is against their vital interests".

Secondly, Serbs must be granted all individual rights and freedoms that the EU countries, the state union, and Serbia grant to their citizens. Thirdly, Serbs must be given constitutional guarantees and institutional mechanisms that will ensure their normal life and survival in the province. The easiest way to ensure these guarantees is through decentralisation, the document reads.

The Serb negotiators outlined a set of guiding principles for the platform: sovereignty and territorial integrity, essential autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia, the creation of a Serb entity, and the protection of Orthodox holy sites, cultural heritage and property.

The Kosovo Albanian side has also finalised its decentralisation proposal. The document contains basic principles for the reform of local self-rule and "guarantees the territorial integrity of Kosovo", Kosovo Local Self-Rule Minister Ljutfi Haziri said on Monday.

According to Haziri, it is a serious proposal "which the Kosovo delegation will offer the ethnic communities". He urged the Serb community to accept the plan, explaining that it is founded on constitutional solutions that refer to the immediate future of Kosovo with its status resolved.