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UNMIK/PR/648
More than one million Kosovo residents have now been civilly registered and most possess UNMIK ID cards thanks to a system that is now secure and reliable, Peter Schumann, co-head of the Department of Public Services, told members of the Kosovo Transitional Council today. In addition, more than 50,000 Kosovars have UNMIK travel documents, and many have used them to travel outside Kosovo. Schumann briefed the KTC on the various projects for civil registration ongoing this year, which have registered, as of last week, 1,121,645 'habitual residents' of Kosovo. Normal civil registration has been ongoing in 30 municipal centers since November 2000, he explained. However UNMIK organized special projects this year to encourage registration of Kosovo Turks and Serbs who did not participate in the exercise last year, as well as others who may have returned from abroad or turned 16. Through a special program targeting the Turkish community, 5,600 people were added to the civil registry this summer, and through the special project at 40 centers targeting Serbs and other minorities, at least 48,000 more have been registered, Schumann said. The identity card system has been totally overhauled, thanks to the work of Public Services' Kosovar staff, who re-entered data for 900,000 residents into the registrar's computer system, after errors plagued last year's identity card project. All but 100,000 identity cards have been picked up from PTK offices, and UNMIK is currently launching a project to deliver the remaining cards to people who are over 60 years old. The KTC was also briefed on the development in sports, by Sports Department co-heads Biyyala Rao and Zenun Pajaziti. They described the challenges faced by the Department to build an adequate sports infrastructure, to reform sports federations, to enable Kosovo athletes to compete internationally and to encourage interethnic competition. The Department has held nearly 300 coaching camps for juniors in the past two years, all in cooperation with municipalities. About 10 to 15 percent of the camps were held in minority areas. The Department has implemented a program to help sports clubs to encourage women's participation. Disabled people are also being given assistance. To improve infrastructure, the Department has invested some DM 600,000 over the past two years to renovate sports facilities, but has been unable to attract donor investment for the massive renovation that is needed. The department has made strenuous efforts to promote interethnic competition, said Mr. Rao, who urged KTC members to abandon politics when thinking of sports. He said it is probably that the Sterpce football club may join the Kosove league, and the Strpce basketball club has proposed to join Basketball Federation of Kosovo, he said. In other business, PDSRSG Gary Matthews, who chaired today's meeting,
reacted to a criticism by one KTC member of remarks reportedly made
by Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic following his address
to the United Nations Security Council in New York on Tuesday. Mr.
Matthews cited the public statement issued by the Security Council
following the briefings by Mr. Covic and SRSG Hans Haekkerup as the only
official document of the results of the meeting. Department of Education co-head Michael Daxner responded that edcucation for special needs students has been a major focus since UNMIK arrived, and that the ideology of 'defectology' had been eradicated from Kosovo. Instead impaired children will be integrated into the normal school system as much as possible and the program, supported by the Finnish government, would become the "best in the Balkans." Regarding Serb and Bosniac higher education, he said both communities should accept studies in the same (Serbo-Croat) language and that the Serb community has been wrongfully excluded from University of Pristina, therefore other campuses would have to be opened, albeit within the single administrative mandate of UNSCR 1244. Different theories on the teaching of religion existed, and while Mr. Daxner said the "government should not proactively introduce religion," the Department remained open to ideas on how religious studies could be taught. He said that the Department would not practice affirmative action in terms of admissions of underachieving groups, but that he was looking into reports of certain municipalities applying varying standards and would try to regulate the admissions into secondary schools. Education co-head Naim Rustemi added that the mining faculty in Mitrovica represented a first step toward joint education for the Serb and Albanian communities. . . |