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UNMIK- UNHCR-OSCE-EU Press Briefing, 5 April 2001 UNMIK Spokesman Sunil Narula UNMIK Spokesman Sunil Narula SRSG in Belgrade SRSG Hans Haekkerup is in Belgrade today. There he will meet EU represented in Belgrade and brief them on progress in finalizing a legal framework to provide the territory with substantial autonomy, as provided for in Security Council Resolution 1244. Later he is scheduled to meet with Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Vojislav Kostunica to discuss the legal framework, the release of Kosovo Albanian prisoners held in Serbia, the question of Kosovo Serbs rejoining the process in developing the legal framework and participating in the administration and the elections. No mad cow disease in Kosovo UNMIK's Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development has
categorically denied reports printed in newspapers in Kosovo on Tuesday
that a case of mad cow disease (BSE) had been found in
Klina. The department has also said that such reports can be highly damaging to Kosovo's economy besides, creating unnecessary concern amongst the local population. ID Card Distribution The ID Card production and distribution is progressing well. Of the 278,000 sent to the PTK offices all over Kosovo, 130,000 have been collected by the Kosovars. We yet again request people to pick up their cards. However, surprisingly Kosovars are not applying for the Travel Documents in large numbers. Till the end of last week only about 11,400 people had applied for these travel documents. As you know those who get an ID card can apply for a travel document in their municipal civil registration centers. The travel documents take about four weeks to produce. Minorities meeting The meeting of the Roma, Ashkali and Egyptian community leaders with the Albanian leaders, scheduled for this morning, has been postponed because of logistical reasons. So there is no photo op at 12.45 p.m. The meeting is being rescheduled and the new date will be announced soon. Johan Van Lamoen's press conference On Monday, 9 April, the chairman of the JWG on the Legal Framework Johan Van Lamoen will hold a news conference here at 1200 hrs after the regular UNMIK-KFOR press briefing. Joschka Fischer in Kosovo Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, is visiting Kosovo tomorrow. He is mainly meeting Kosovo political leaders, both Albanian and Serbs. He will also meet SRSG and the new COMKFOR, Lt. Gen Thorstein Skiaker. He will meet the press at 1920 here at UNMIK, but we will inform you about the venue of the press conference. On Sunday we have the Pristina International Marathon and we would request you all to participate and to announce it in your newspapers and radio stations and encourage people to participate. Registration started on Monday, in fact Ambassador Everts was the first person to register and it continues until Saturday evening at 6p. Now even Police Commissioner Albiston is registered. UNHCR Spokesman Tony Land I can be very brief today. Movement from FYROM The movement of people from FYROM into Kosovo appears to have stopped. The international community is currently assessing the needs of those accommodated in host families in order to provide the most appropriate assistance. Distribution of food and items such as blankets, mattresses and in some cases cooking stoves has already started. Registration UNHCR is assisting UNMIK in a comprehensive registration exercise of those who have arrived from FYROM. This is currently taking place in Prizren Region where the largest number has remained. It will be extended to cover Gjilan/Gnjinane Region next and then to whole of Kosovo. OSCE Spokeswoman Claire Trevena Leposavic Briefing Tomorrow Ambassador Daan Everts is hosting a seminar on election systems and voter registration in Leposavic for Kosovo's Serb communities. The seminar will be similar to other such meetings held across Kosovo over the past weeks. Political and civil leaders will be learning about how electoral systems are chosen and how they work. They will also be briefed about voter registration inside and outside Kosovo. The OSCE is hopeful that the Serb community will fully participate in the elections planned for later this year. Roma Day This Sunday is international Roma Day and the OSCE is sponsoring events to mark it. Dance and music groups from Prizren, Gnjilane/Gjilan and Podujevo will be participating, at the Cultural House in Prizren. It starts at 11 am. There are also events taking place in Peja/Pec to mark the day - which is the 30th anniversary of international Roma day. There'll be a press release about this tomorrow. Media Harassment The OSCE has been receiving an increasing number of reports of harassment of journalists in Kosovo. This is of serious concern to us. Our media affairs department monitors closely all cases of harassment. It is not acceptable for any individual or party to harass journalists. This is an issue right now, and also as we head towards an election. In the election process there are mechanisms to act against parties who do try to influence the media. We are committed to building a free and democratic media. This means respecting the right of journalists to carry out their work without political or other pressures being placed upon them. The OSCE is running a journalist protection programme. If any
journalist feels they are being harassed they should contact Willem Houwen
at the OSCE (500 162) on ext 339. On a more positive note, the OSCE is continuing its media training for radio presenters. Next week a course will be taking place in Gjilan/Gnjilane aimed at improving the skills of presenters. This is part of the OSCE's ongoing assistance to media in Kosovo to make it self-sustaining. EU Spokesman Reinhold Brender Power Supply All energy import contracts expired at the end of March, as foreseen, and Kosovo is now reliant on domestically generated power. Consumer demand until 31 March was being met by imports from Bulgaria and Montenegro and local power production. Today the situation is the following: Technical difficulties have caused Unit A4 and B2 to cease production. As only Unit A3 is generating power (110 MW) severe load shedding will occur throughout Kosovo until this afternoon when Unit B2 is expected to be back into the system. Consumers will then have a rotating schedule of 4 hours with electricity and 2 hours Trade and Industry The commercialization contract for the Lipljan bottling plant has been signed last week by UNMIK and the Prishtina based company "Dajti". Banking On 29 March 2000, the BPK Governing Board granted a final license to Bank for Private Business (BPB). After Micro Enterprises Bank and New Bank of Kosovo, BPB is the third bank in Kosovo to receive a final license from BPK. Trepca In order to contribute to a cleaner environment, the Zvecan lead smelter, part of the Trepca complex, has started recasting about 400 tons of metallic lead. The processing of the scrap lead removes some of the waste that is presently littered around the Zvecan site. The melting process will not cause any new environmental problems, since the lead that is currently being melted and re-cast has already been through the primary lead smelting stages and therefore produces far less pollution. The money generated from selling the recast lead will be invested into Trepca to help repair it. Reconstruction The European Agency for Reconstruction, held a public opening of the offers submitted following the launch of a DM 50 million tender for the supply of the full range of necessary construction materials for the reconstruction of 3,500 houses in 2001, at least 80% of which are completely destroyed houses. About 45 of these offers have been submitted by Kosovar suppliers, which demonstrates the ability of local companies to participate in tenders on an international scale. Media Opportunities The European Agency for Reconstruction celebrates today the opening of two completely reconstructed bridges in Kosovo: Milosevo bridge and Vrani Do bridge. Media are invited to come to this event in which representatives from the EAR, UNMIK's Department of Transport and Infrastructure, the Directorate of Roads and the contractor who carried out the work will participate. Work progress in the transport sector in Kosovo is being presented together with the Agency's plans to provide further support in this Area in 2001. A press release on this is available outside the room. The Department of Trade and Industry in cooperation with the Department of Local Administration will hold a press briefing tomorrow (Friday) in the DTI Building on corporate governance of Socially Owned Enterprises. Specifically, the briefing will focus on the process of selecting directors of Socially Owned Enterprises. A press release on this is also available outside the room. Questions: Q: I passed through the border crossing with Montenegro yesterday at noon. There was a queue of obvious refugees. Do you have any idea where these people are coming from? TL: I have absolutely no information at all. Are you talking about the crossing with Montenegro or the Morina crossing? <Montenegro> I will look into that. It is something with which I have no information whatsoever. Q: You mentioned the journalist harassment. Which media has been harassed, who are the journalists and which political parties are harassing the journalists in Kosovo? CT: We are not specifying which outlets, which media nor which journalists. We do try and respect confidentiality on this because obviously it is a very sensitive issue. So we don't go into details about who is harassing or who the alleged harassers are. But we are very well aware of it and we do make reports on this. Q: Which political parties are suspected? CT: As I said, we don't specify who the alleged harassers are. Q: How can you protect the journalists then? CT: We can protect the journalists by making it very public that this is not the way forward. And we can protect the journalists at a certain stage by, particularly in the election campaign, there is the mechanisim, at least last year under the election rules, where the political party was acting improperly and this was monitored throughout campaign the ultimate sanction was that their candidate could be withdrawn from the list. So that is one of the sanctions. We hope we don't have to work through sanctions or work through the court systems because we expect that people will act sensibly and will respect the freedom of the media and freedom of the media means journalists being able to work independently. Q: We know Haekkerup is in Belgrade today. Is he going to raise the issue of Mitrovica with the Yugoslav authorities? SN: I don't know if he is going to specifically raise that issue but he is obviously talking about issues related to Kosovo Serbs. So I can't really tell you that. Q: How many refugees are there from Macedonia and where are they located? TL: The figure of people who have arrived recently from Macedonia is something in the figure of 8,000. I gave the numbers in detail at the last press briefing. A number of these people have come quite mobile with their own transport and have dispersed all over Kosovo. But there is something like 5,000 people we believe in the Prizren region and something like 2,000 people in the Gjilane region. We are conducting the registration process now so we can definatively identify the exact numbers and locations. Q: The power cuts are due to the lack of imports. What is the reason for it? RB: The import contracts expired. That means that the
international donor community is willing and was willing to support Kosovo
in the power supply. But it was not a support that was intended to
last forever. At one point the imports had to stop and it is now the
Q: Do you plan to renew contract s with some of the partners given the fact that we know how unreliable the local plants are? RB: This is a question that depends not only on UNMIK but also on the donor community. As far as the policy is concerned, it was clearly UNMIK's intention to enable the Kosovar power units to generate the power which is needed here. And I would like to remind you that there is an important rehabilitation work going on still on B2 and other plants are also being rehabilitated. Therefore, we are far from having a situation where we can say that today there will really be a need for external support again. Q: Two new border crossings at Zubin Potok and Leposavic are being opened, does it mean that the good being imported from Serbia are going to be submitted to customs procedures? RB: The situation is crystal clear. Goods that come in from Serbia proper and are not originiating from Serbia proper have to pay customs. Generally the good that come through these point are goods originating in Serbia proper and these goods are subject only to excises and sales tax.
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