UNMIK-KFOR-OSCE Press Briefing: 2 October 2000

UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
KFOR Spokesman Major Steve Shappell
OSCE Spokeswoman Laura O’Mahony

UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
       
Mitrovica

We had a very eventful weekend in Kosovo. As you have reported, a fire which broke out in the Zvecan lead smelter Saturday night destroyed the four transformers that  bring electricity to  the community of Zvecan. UNMIK has set up an emergency task force to assist the community in dealing with the lack of electricity. We've been sending generators to essential facilities in Zvecan, including the bakeries,  health house and schools, and more are on their way. The plan is to get generators at the 11 sub-stations around Zvecan in order to restore as much power as possible to the community.

UNMIK officials are now certain that arson caused the fire which broke out around 10 p.m. and was extinguished before midnight by local fire fighters, KFOR and UNMIK.

A full investigation is underway to determine how the saboteurs penetrated into the lead smelter.

During the fire, a small crowd had gathered inside the complex and burned the car of UNMIK press officer Michael Keats, who was also assaulted. The crowd also threw stones at UNMIK Fire Marshall Bob Triozzi as he and his units tried to enter the plant to put out the fire.

The situation remains tense in Zvecan. It is clear that the perpetrators of this sabotage have succeeded in harming the community of Zvecan as well as relations between international community and the local people so this a very serious incident for the people of Zvecan and for us.

House fenced

Early yesterday morning, UNMIK ordered a private company to fence in an illegal house in Dragodan after the owners failed for more than one year to heed warnings that they had no permit and was building on municipal property. Today we are in the process of securing and fencing off a second site, this one is on Sunny Hill. These were orders signed by the late Rexhep Luci, before he died.

The municipality had issued a restraining order to the owner of the house construction fenced off today as early as March of this year and another restraining order in May. Again this construction was taking place on municipal land. It is unlicensed and does not fit into the urban plan.

IAC

Tomorrow the Interim Administrative Council meets to discuss various draft regulations including one on the rules of procedures for the Housing and Property Claims Commission. There are a couple of draft regulations amending the laws on excise taxes and customs and regulations setting up the administrative departments of Civil Security and Emergency Preparedness and on Non-residents' Affairs. They'll also discuss the draft regulation on social assistance for war invalids. Following the meeting, SRSG Bernard Kouchner, members of the IAC and Kosovo Transitional Council will meet with a delegation of the hunger strikers from Dubrava, and Dr. Kouchner will announce new initiatives on the issue of missing and detained persons which was the issue of the hunger strike that ended last week on the condition that they would meet tomorrow with Dr. Kouchner on the IAC on the issue of the missing and detained.

Town Hall meeting

The next town hall meeting by Dr. Kouchner will take place in Podujevo on Wednesday, 4 October, which starts with a tour of a housing project at 13:45. Dr. Kouchner will also visit the Ashkali community. The town hall meeting betgins at 15:35. a press bus will leave this building at 12:30 Media can register with Sylvana in the Press Office.
 
UNMIK Police Update

UNMIK Police reported that early yesterday morning, at 5:30 a.m., eight armed people robbed the Pristina offices of the British government aid service DFID, located in Dragodan, by overpowering two guards and tying them up. Two safes were stolen with undisclosed contents and one white Land Rover.

In Prizren, early this morning, three explosions occurred just behind the UNMIK Police station, in a house under construction. Two nearby residents who lived nearby sustained minor injuries, as did four German military police. Three UNMIK Police cars and windows on nearby houses were damaged. UNMIK Police and KFOR evacuated people in the neighborhood. Each of these bombs contained three kilograms of TNT.

Early this morning in Podujevo, there was a robbery in the municipality building where unknown people broke into the building and the safe and stole undisclosed contents.

Saturday evening, a Kosovo Serb member of the Kosovo Police Service reported that a Kosovo Albanian family broke into his house and stole various items, including his police equipment and television.

Finally, Police are investigating the murder Saturday night of Kosovo Protection Corps officer Sadri Berisha, who was platoon commander of the third regional brigade in Peja/Pec. Mr. Berisha was shot to death in his car as he was driving near Klina.

Mine Action

We have a new kind of an airship that we be arriving to detect landmines and unexploded ordinance. This is being coordinated by the UN Mine Action Coordination Center (MACC) as well as with KFOR. The airship, known as the MINESEEKER is a manned airship which is like a dirigible or blimp, as we used to say in the US, and is filled with helium gas which is not inflammable. It is currently in Greece but is expected to fly into Kosovo in the next few days. It will be based in Djakova and also in Podujevo and KFOR is arranging a tour for journalists on Friday to visit the airship. MACC coordinator John Flanagan will be here on Friday at the press briefing to explain more about it.

ICRC

I have one announcement from the ICRC. Tomorrow at noon, the Institute of Public Health and the Department of Water and Sanitation are inaugurating a rehabilitated laboratory and mobile lab unit. This was funded and supervised by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The event will take place at the Institute of Public Health in Pristina. You are all invited.

Technical Issue

In trying to send you press releases or notices by email, we find that the emails come back saying "accounts full." Can you please leave with our office the most up-to-date email, telephone and fax numbers of your media so we can reach you on weekends. We try to deliver things to your offices but sometimes we don’t have the means so we would appreciate if you could let us know current working emails and faxes.

Refuting an Article

Finally, I would like to say something about an unsigned article from the Association of Kosovo Journalists, which I assume, represents all of you in this room,. This article was published by various papers here on Saturday and personally attacked my colleague Sylvana Nzirorera, whom you all know, and myself, as arrogant primitives. It also describes the relationship between us at UNMIK and you journalists as bad, because of  the two of us.

Sylvana and I reject this article as complete trash. Since it is unsigned, I can only guess who the author is. It is someone who is trying to arrange an appointment with Dr. Kouchner who is out of Kosovo, we had been trying to get an appointment with Dr. Kouchner for this person. That is my supposition.

We also question the decision of the newspapers to publish such a piece. We work very hard in this Department to try to be responsive to the needs of all journalists and reporters from all the papers who published this article are regularly in my office and in the press office every day. So it is sad to see that the newspapers who published this rubbish are telling their readership that UNMIK does not support your work.

I was a journalist for 15 years and  I know how hard it can be to work with public information people. And now I am on the other side of the fence. Because I was a journalist, I really sympathise with how hard you all have to work and we work hard as well. This piece was not journalism and it wasn’t fair and as far as I am concerned, it wasn’t true.

KFOR Spokesman Major Steve R. Shappell

House Explosions

Late last night in Multinational Brigade East, KFOR Task Force 2-327 reported two explosions north of Viti / Vitina, about 10 minutes apart. Upon arrival, the troops from Task Force 2-327 discovered one house destroyed, and two additional houses damaged.  It was reported that the three houses, owned by a Kosovar Serb, were in the process of being sold to a Kosovar Albanian.  KFOR troops cordoned off the area for the KFOR Explosive Ordnance Disposal experts could make a complete search of the structures and adjoining areas.  That search did not reveal any additional explosive devices.  KFOR Military Police and UNMIK Police are investigating.

Media Opportunity

Mineseeker Airship

The press is invited on Friday, October 8, to attend a media event to introduce and view the MINESEEKER airship that will arrive in Kosovo this week.  The mine-seeking airship, operating on behalf of the UNMIK Mine Action Coordination Centre, will conduct airborne surveys of unexploded ordnance and mined areas with the purpose of expediting MACC mine and UXO clearance operations.

The event is scheduled from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. in Podujeve / Podujevo. Transportation for the press corps will leave from the KFOR Press Information Centre in Pristina at 8 a.m. and return in time for the regular KFOR Press Conference.  Interested Journalists are kindly requested to sign up for this event with the Media Operations Section of the CPIC.

OSCE Spokeswoman Laura O’Mahony

Internet Election Guide

A couple of announcements for you. We have compiled a comprehensive internet guide to the elections for you and the information kit has now been placed on the OSCE website. It includes for example all the press releases we have issued to date on the elections, on the electoral rules and various sorts of background documents as well. You will find that they have been divided into sort of user-friendly sections on the electoral system, the voters' lists, the regulatory bodies the contenders in the elections, the voting processing itself and voter information. The guide is available in English, Albanian and S and all public documents posted out there as they become available. The OSCE website is www.osce.org and ford/kosovo ford/elections so I hope you find that useful.

Tomorrow is our regular election briefing at 10a.m. in the 4th floor conference room. We will deal with voters' voice. The voters' voice is a book that presents community concerns and priorities as expressed by the people of Kosovo themselves. It is the result of a number of community meetings which ….. Kosovo over the past while. It will be presented to the candidates who are running for municipal office as well as to the general public. So you are cordially invited to attend the briefing tomorrow on that for more details. I have an update for you on the campaign funding.  Roland mentioned last week that funding has been secured to help the smaller political parties with their campaigns. I can give you some details on that now. There are two separate funds as I think Roland mentioned on Friday. One is the general fund for campaign materials and the other is specifically for broadcast box, radio and television so the details I have refers to the first one, that is the general one. The total fund as it stands at the moment is 215,000 DM. That money has been donated by Germany, Switzerland and Norway. Now all the entities will receive some of that money except for the big three that is the LDK, PDK, and AAK. The rest is will receive an equal sum for all their parties and coalitions running in four or more municipalities. They will receive an equal sum of 9,400 DM. For those running in three or less municipalities, they will receive 50 percent of that amount and for independent candidates who are obviously running in one municipality, they will receive 25 percent of that amount. Distribution of that money started last week and it should be finished either today or tomorrow and hopeful we will have more details later in the week on the media fund which is specifically for radio and television spots. An update on a press release we issued last week on fines levied by the Elections Complaints and Appeals Sub-commission, just to let you know that the PDK has paid the two fines levied against it. There were two fines of 1000 Deutsche Marks each and they have been paid. And one final bit of news, the ballots for the Kosovo voting arrived safely in Kosovo yesterday. That's it.

Questions

Q: What is the name of the Austrian NGO that is handling the money and secondly, how many ballots actually arrived in Kosovo yesterday?

LM: I don’t have a figure on the number of ballots but I can find that out for you. The name of the Austrian NGO is EPOS. I can give you details on how to contact them.

Q: About the Yugoslav elections, will you allow the second round to be held in Kosovo?

SM: We still haven’t taken a policy decision on it.

Q: When will the decision be taken?

SM: Probably when Dr. Kouchner gets back, sometime this week.

Q: Kosovo's current electricity supply comes from Serbia if at all because it seems Serbia itself is going to face some power problems of their own because of the strike at the coal mine south of Belgrade. Will this affect Kosovo if the power supply breaks down in Serbia?

SM: I have to find out what the current arrangement is but in the past it has been part of a network where power went back and forth. When we had the power problems several months ago we were getting up to 70 or 100 megawatts a day. I don’t know what we are getting right now but I can check and get back to you.

Q: As of this morning Ambassador Everts has decided to take on armed protection on a 24-hour a day basis. Does this signify increase in threat against international staff members from the OSCE in the run up to elections and have there been any intimidatory incidents against Mr. Everts?

LM: I don’t have any information on the first part of your question Christian. I havent seen the Ambassador so far this morning. Security has been increased around the buildings but not to any significant degree. I mean we are not talking about armed guards in the building or anything like that but I could follow up on that for you.

Q: On the murder of this TMK commander near Klina, is his name Sadri Berisha? This seems to be the third commander, I don’t know what the ranks are but there was a gentleman who was commander who was killed in Prizren about two or three months ago and there was one found dead near Suva Reka without his hands and now you’ve got another dead. Is there any pattern you can discern? 

SM: We don’t have a pattern at this point

SS: We don’t either.

Q:  Sorry, but TMK as far as I know was created by the UN and you are losing commanders at quite an appalling rate. It looks like one a month. What does the investigation show because you have had two murders already, at least the ones I can remember and now you've had a third one. And it seems to be a core of commanders, I don’t know what their ranks are, but there seem to be a regional commander. What you are saying is that the gentleman who has just recently been killed seems to be the commander for the Pec/Peja region.

SM: He was a platoon commander.

Q: A platoon commander?

SM: I don’t how many people there are of that rank or the rank of the other two. It is obviously a terrible loss. There are 5,000 KPC members but I believe that as with some of these political murders we don’t know who the perpetrators are so we don’t know what the motives were. We don’t know yet whether there is some kind of  a campaign against the KPC. It is really too early to say that.

Q: But do you have any further details. We were just told that he was shot in his car, are there any details?

SM: There were no witnesses. The car sustained something like five or eight bullets. He was driving alone. He was shot and killed. There were no witnesses to the murder.