Transcript of the Vojislav Kostunica Press Availability

United Nations - NY on May 9, 2001

Ladies and gentlemen, just a few words. I had an occasion to talk to Mr. Secretary General Annan.  This was one among our conversations.  This time it had to do with the Kosovo issue and even more concretely with the Legal Framework for the Provisional Self Rule of Kosovo.  The intentions of our government are actually to have, and they are I would say, completely in accordance with the intentions of the UN and all the actors….our intentions are actually to have a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Kosovo within the frame of Resolution 1244.  That means that one should have institutions for self rule that would be for the provisional and not final, until we come to the final solution, and that means that we are also looking for the institutional arrangement that will enable minorities to actually understand that their rights, their wills and their interests are respected. 

That is the basic problem.  That is the test for any democratic order -- respect and the full respect for the rights of minorities.  We have been talking in that direction.  Actually our approach is very constructive. We are looking forward for such arrangements in Kosovo.  We are looking forward to the situation in which Kosovo would be without acts of violence, killing and so on.  And I think that my conversations with Mr. Annan and also Special Representative Mr. Haekkerup were in that direction.  Actually we tried to define the need for institutions where the rights of minorities would be respected, but not in that way that we are having some sort of institutional blockade. That means that when it comes to the final decision, one should have the representative of the international administer decide if there is no other way of deciding.  But we are proposing some sort of consensual democracy model instead of parliamentary majority, which would not function in the case of Kosovo where there is an overwhelming Albanian majority and small Serbian and non-Albanian minorities. 

We have also touched on the problems of missing persons in Kosovo, all of them.  We have also touched on the problem of displaced persons.  And besides talking about the Kosovo issue, we have covered the problems of the Presevo Valley and the situation in the Yugoslav Federation.  There once again, we expressed our intention to find a solution for a democratic Montenegro within a democratic Yugoslavia and once again repeated the idea of the minimal and functional federation.  That means a so arranged federal state of Yugoslavia where both Serbia and Montenegro will have high degree of autonomy and that the federal authorities would be small but efficient and functional.  In that respect I think we found common interest.  It is in the interest of the UN if this country survives and the surviving of this country, Yugoslavia, means that peace and stability in the region will survive.  Thank you

Q: Did you have a chance to tackle any other issues like Macedonia?  Would you also give us your thoughts regarding yesterday's incident in Banja Luka  in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

VK: We covered many of those issues, including those that you mentioned, but of course in a rather brief conversation it was not possible to get into details.  We are very concerned about the situation in Macedonia of course.  We are also very concerned and unhappy because of the incident of violence and religious intolerance in the case of Banja Luka. We do think things like that shouldn't be repeated, but on the other hand we think that in some cases that some of those acts of reconciliation in the countries where there was war and conflict, maybe some of those acts of reconciliation like the rebuilding of the churches and mosques were not prepared well. Like some other incidents in other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina like in ?? and Sarajevo that might provoke those incidents in Banja Luka, but of course we are very unhappy because of that.  So we touched on those problems briefly.

Q:  Human Rights Watch asked you to reconsider handing over Milosovic to the War Crimes Tribunal.  Is this a possibility and what is his status?

VK:  It is a possibility and I will say it is even more than a possibility, a future reality.  That is actually that I will facilitate and enforce the enactment on the law of cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, that is by the federal parliament and that is something that is in procedure right now it is very important to have legally regulated cooperation with the Hague Tribunal and that is something that I will be working on without those sorts of legal provisions.  But it will not be possible to actually have a normal and developing relations with the Hague Tribunal.  We are very firm about it and our international obligations with the Hague Tribunal but we need a legal frame for that cooperation at this moment.

Q:  When is your government going to release all the Albanian prisoners?
VK:   I will tell you that many of them have been released.  You know that the number after the ….was about 700.  There are at this moment 265 Albanians in our prisons and out of that number 180 are just common criminals.  For the rest of them, how would you say, political detainees, our Supreme Court is dealing with these cases and they are going to be released.  So that means they actually will all be released and it is very important and it is a very encouraging message.

Q: (Inaudible) re: tax collection points
VK: That is something that we have not covered in our discussions but we have been how to say surprised.  We are also like in other cases we are trying with direct dialogue with SRSG Mr. Hans Haekkerup to overcome these problems for us.  As you know this tax problem is actually giving the impression that the problem of Kosovo is realized or defined as Kosovo being an independent entity.  It is not in accordance with Resolution 1244 and we think that we shall find the technical base and means to solve that problem and to overcome it.

Speaks in Serbian………..