Kosovo: 'Substantial differences' in minority rights talks

Ethnic Albanian and Serbian officials today discussed how to protect the rights of Kosovo’s minorities, putting the issue on the agenda for the first time during their UN-brokered talks on the province’s future status.

Representatives from Kosovo’s Serb minority boycotted the session, saying they objected to being “degraded to a minority in our own country”.

A delegation from Belgrade, however, attended.

"While other ethnic communities living in Kosovo want the status of national minority and want to gain their rights from that domain, for Serbs such stand is unacceptable,” said Dusan Batakovic, a Serb official at the talks.

“You cannot force a nation into the status of a minority,” he said.

Veton Surroi, an ethnic Albanian leader, said today that the two sides had “substantial differences” on their approach to the issues, and he accused Belgrade of showing little co-operation.

“This is the hand of partnership to Belgrade to help in improving the conditions for the Serbs in Kosovo,” he said.

The issue of minority rights is seen as crucial to resolving Kosovo’s status. Though still a part of Serbia, Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, when a Nato-led air war ended a Serbian military crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.

Ethnic Albanians make up 90% of Kosovo’s two million population, and there are about 100,000 Serbs, mostly living in communities across the province. Another 200,000 Serbs and other minorities – including Turks, Bosnians and Gypsies - fled during the 1999 Nato bombardment.

UN mediators are pushing the two sides to narrow their differences before tackling the ultimate issue – whether Kosovo will become independent, as ethnic Albanians insist, or remain a part of Serbia, which Belgrade and the minority Serbs want.

Surroi said the Serbian officials “are knocking on an open door. Every citizen is a constituent of the new Kosovo. We are trying to find noble ways on which there is a relationship between those who are an ethnic majority and those who are in an ethnic minority.

“But we don’t see this as citizens in the first, second or third category,” he added.

Yesterday, negotiators began the latest round of talks, but failed to win agreement on most points in discussing how much say Serb-run municipalities should have in Kosovo’s education, healthcare, police and justice systems.

UN mediator Bernhard Schlageck said there was some agreement on the issue of appointing municipal police chiefs, but “on other major stumbling blocks we made no distinctive progress”.

The UN envoys hope to steer the two sides towards an agreement on Kosovo’s future status by the end of 2006. Several weeks ago, the chief UN mediator in the talks, Martti Ahtisaari, brought the presidents and prime ministers of Kosovo and Serbia together for the first face-to-face talks on the status issue.

With the two sides far apart, however, Ahtisaari is expected to develop an initial proposal on the future status settlement later this year.