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UNMIK/PR/655
PRISTINA - The Acting SRSG Tom Koenigs today gave out the one millionth UNMIK ID card to a Kosovo Serb, Bojan Nicic, a resident of Caglavica, at a ceremony in Gracanica. Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Koenigs announced that a regulation would be issued soon making registration compulsory for the people of Kosovo. In due course, he said, UNMIK would start the process of registering people under the age of 16 years. He urged the people of Kosovo, who hadn't yet picked up their ID cards from the Post Offices to go and do so. Mr. Koenigs said that more than a million people had been registered and one million ID cards printed. He said while registering did not mean that the people had to participate in the elections, but they had "political and democratic obligation" to vote. "It is not a legal obligation". He said when the registration exercise began, "we did not think that it would be so complicated and time consuming." He congratulated both Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs working in the Central Processing Centre (CPC), one in Pristina and the other in Gracanica, involved in data entry and production of ID cards, for a fine job that they had done. He also thanked the donors who had financed the entire ID cards operation. The CPC is also involved in the processing of travel document applications and the distribution of travel documents. So far over a hundred thousand travel documents have been processed. The head of the CPC, Margot Eelman, said the CPC is a good example of team work, where people from all communities were working together to establish a reliable civil registration data base.
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