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Kosovo: senior UN official opens talks in Serbia on refugee returns

Kosovo: senior UN official opens talks in Serbia on refugee returns

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A senior United Nations official opened talks in Serbia today on the return of Serb refugees to Kosovo, a crucial factor in deciding the final status of the Albanian-majority Serbian province which the world body has run ever since Western forces drove out Yugoslav troops in 1999 amid grave rights abuses in ethnic fighting.

“The purpose of this meeting was to start an honest and direct dialogue with the leaders in Belgrade with respect to returns, returnees and property,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Principal Deputy Special Representative Steven Schook told journalists after the meetings in the Serbian capital.

“I am very optimistic. We agreed to have follow-up meetings at the technical level. We began a sincere dialogue in the best interest of all the displaced persons and truly in the best interest of the economic development of Kosovo,” he said of the visit.

The talks followed the signing last week of an agreement by representatives of the Serbian and Kosovo Governments to speed up the return of people displaced by the conflict in the province, where Albanians outnumber Serbs and others by 9 to 1.

The UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has been seeking to foster communal harmony and promote the return of the Serbs who fled ever since it started running the province after North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) military intervention in 1999. Scores of thousands of Albanians who fled during the earlier fighting with the Yugoslav army have already returned.

In his latest report on Kosovo, released yesterday, Mr. Annan said the parties remained far apart and compromise was crucial for making progress in the final status talks. Independence and autonomy are among options that have been mentioned. Serbia rejects independence and Kosovo’s Serbs have been boycotting the province’s local government, the so-called Provisional Institutions.

Mr. Schook conferred with the President of the Coordination Centre for Kosovo Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic, Serbian presidential adviser Dusan Batakovic, and the political and foreign policy advisers to the Prime Minister.

Last week’s agreement seeks to boost returns through provisions that range from affording access to basic services to promoting integration of internally displaced persons (IDPs). It acknowledges that a successful process is based on three elements: ensuring safety of returnees; returning property to the displaced and rebuilding their houses; and creating an environment that sustains returns.