UN urges resumed talks between Kosovo and Serbia
on conflict’s toll of missing
14 January 2005 – The United Nations administrator for Kosovo
today called for a resumption of direct talks between Serbia and
the province to resolve the issue of more than 3,000 people still
missing five years after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) drove out Yugoslav troops amid ethnic fighting between
Albanians and Serbs.
“This is above all else a humanitarian
issue,” Secretary General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative
Søren Jessen-Petersen said in Geneva, where he met with
the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross
(ICRC), Jakob Kellenberger.
“The families of missing persons have
been suffering for a long time. I am grateful for the ICRC’s
offer to take a lead role in facilitating dialogue because we
now need to move on this issue. It has been dormant for too long.”
Further delays, he added, would only aggravate
the suffering of families in all the communities involved. They
had a right to know what had happened to their loved ones.
The UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo
(UNMIK), which has run the province since 1999, “is ready
to move on this issue straight away with the backing of the international
community,” Mr. Jessen-Petersen said.
A resumption of direct dialogue between the
two sides would accelerate the process of returning mortal remains.
Better exchange of information would also help overcome technical
difficulties and make it easier to determine the whereabouts of
missing persons, as well as improve coordination between the different
agencies involved.
Mr. Kellenberger reaffirmed his organization’s
commitment to chairing a working group bringing together representatives
of the two sides, which has only met once since it was set up
in March 2004, to find out what has happened to the missing.
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Bomb explosion kills UN police officer in Kosovo
13 January 2005 – A United Nations
police officer in Kosovo was killed today in a bomb explosion,
leading the chief UN envoy for the ethnically-divided province
to condemn the attack as a "despicable act that would certainly
be repudiated by the people of Kosovo."
According to the UN Interim Administration Mission
in Kosovo (UNMIK), the police officer, from Nigeria, was driving
to work this morning in Prizren town in an UNMIK police car when
a bomb exploded.
The Secretary-General's Special Representative
for Kosovo, Søren Jessen-Petersen, said: "Those who
espouse the path of violence must be isolated and weeded out from
society. The progressive sections of Kosovo society and its political
leadership have been working in close cooperation with the international
community to take Kosovo forward on the path of good order and
prosperity."
He also cautioned against any speculation on
the incident at this stage. "An investigation will establish,
I trust, exactly what happened," he said, extending his condolences
to the family of the deceased officer.
Police investigators, as well as forensics and
explosives experts, are currently investigating the circumstances
of the incident and the precise nature of the explosion.
Kosovo has been under UN administration
since 1999 when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
drove mainly Serbian Yugoslav troops out amid fighting between
the province’s majority Albanians and minority Serbs.
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