Senior UN Kosovo official meets with Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia

A senior United Nations official in Kosovo today met with the Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia to discuss the province's judicial system and the ongoing hunger strike by 16 detainees.

Following their meeting at the Mitrovica Detention Centre, Jean-Christian Cady, the official in charge of police matters for the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), and Nebojsa Covic, who is also head of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo, issued a joint statement that said both sides sought concrete solutions to the issues behind the hunger strike in order to end it.

"We also engaged in a wider discussion on how both UNMIK and the Serbian Ministry of Justice can contribute to improving further the judicial process and to build on the ongoing efforts to enhance the trust of the people in the judicial system," the statement said. Both the Serbian and UNMIK officials agreed that the goal was a multiethnic judicial system for Kosovo, "available to all communities on an equal and impartial basis."

The two officials also reiterated the need to increase the number of Serb judges, prosecutors and lawyers in the ongoing efforts to build a multiethnic judicial system in Kosovo without creating parallel systems in the province.