UNMIK/PR/23

PRESS RELEASE

2 August 1999

UNMIK RE-OPENS POST AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUILDING

PRISTINA-Bernard Kouchner, Special Representative of the Secretary-General, today re-opened the main post and telecommunications building in Pristina, in a major step toward restoring Kosovo’s telephone and postal services, largely dysfunctional since the beginning of the conflict in late March.

In a brief ceremony, Kouchner, head of the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo, welcomed some 400 former employees who, working with UNMIK and KFOR,  will re-establish telephone and postal services throughout Kosovo.

"This is a good signal for me, and I want to thank you, because of all your work and because all of you are coming back to the job without discrimination. This is a major step, because not only do you need work, but the Kosovo people need you,"  Kouchner said. "You should know that I am also a Kosovar. We are coming back in the spirit of reconciliation. We are confident in you and in this future post and telecommunications company. You have agreed with me that politics stops at the door. That is not to say all political life has stopped. With you, we are building democracy."

Most telephone links between Kosovo and the rest of the world were cut during March and April, when NATO airstrikes destroyed trunk lines between telephone exchange systems, which remained largely intact. The postal service functions only in a small corner of Kosovo. Postal services will have to be resolved throughout the province.

UNMIK civil administration officials and KFOR have been working with a coordination team of former employees, who lost their jobs 10 years ago. Plans are also in  the works to restore quickly  minimal services and ultimately to install a modern telephone system.

The coordination team, along with UNMIK,  will propose names for a Joint Civil Commission on Telecommunications, which will manage Post & Telecommunications Kosovo (PTK), the company’s name before 1989. The JCC will also ensure former employees  who wish can return to work, regardless of their ethnic or religious background.

 UNMIK will chair the Commission and administer the Kosovo assets of PTT Serbia, the former telecommunications company. PTT Serbia is 51 percent state-owned. Italian and Greek companies which invested in the Yugoslav telecommunications system in 1997, hold the remainder.

Restoring the Kosovo telecommunications system will cost between US $1 and 5 million, according to KFOR communications experts. The system’s existing technology is largely obsolete, and UNMIK will undertake to modernize the telephone network, based on the results of a technical assessment and the availability of donor funds.