UNMIK-KFOR-Press Briefing: 7 Aug 2000
UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
KFOR
Spokesman Major Craig Snow
UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
The Momcilovic trial continues today in the Gnjilane District Court. Presiding Judge Patrice de Charette hopes to wind up the hearing today.
Police
From UNMIK Police, the local LDK president in Donaj Obrinje, Serbca/Skenderaj, Mr. Mehmet Cerkinaj, reported to UNMIK police that he was fired upon outside his home last night. Police are on the scene conducting an investigation.
New Pristina Regional
Admininistrator:
Mr. Jean Guinard of France has been appointed the new regional administrator of Pristina. Mr. Guinard, 59, spent much of his career in the military, retiring as general. He worked the past eight years in a service of the French prime minister devoted to security. In that post he was in charge of relations between the army and civil service at the government level.
Power
The Kosovo Power Company shut down unit 2 of the Kosovo B power plant on Saturday night for a four-month overhaul. B1 was to have been restarted as soon as possible, however a transformer problem was detected which will take 2-3 weeks to repair. Unit A3 has been operating since Saturday. Unit A1 stopped Sunday night with a coal feeder problem and is scheduled to restart today. With only Plant A available, it will be crucial to have imports. Meanwhile we have arranged for imported power from Greece, at least for the next day or two, for a total of some 300 MW of available electricity.. This means the electricity regime for today will be two hours off and four hours on. We will be publishing a schedule of electricity distribution for Pristina hopefully this afternoon, when we'll have more information for the coming days.
Regulation
The UNMIK Regulation on Municipal Names and Boundaries has been signed: there is a press release outside detailing the official names of the 30 municipalities of Kosovo.
There will be no Interim Administrative Council – meeting tomorrow, the next one will be on Friday. On Wednesday the Kosovo Transitional Council meets to discuss an update on the departments of the Joint Interim Administrative Structure.
Media House
The Fire Marshall is conducting his assessment today and should have a report which we can get to you on Wednesday regarding measures taken over the past week to alleviate the fire hazard problem.
KFOR Spokesman Major Craig
Snow
Media Opportunity
CAMP BONDSTEEL will hold a press briefing and
photo opportunity 10:30 a.m. 8 Aug. in which Multi-National Brigade East
will discuss the recent multi-national operation which lead to the
discovery of a large illegal ordinance cache. The media will be
given the opportunity to view the confiscated weapons, explosives and
ordnance; to ask questions; and to view the destruction of the weapons
cache. The day’s events will also include lunch at the Camp
Bondsteel Dining Facility.
Those planning to attend need to
contact Task Force Falcon at Camp Bondsteel or Staff Sgt. McGuire at the
KFOR Press Information Center. If your agency has any special
requests, please make Staff Sgt. McGuire aware of them by Monday
afternoon. Members of the media are asked to report to Gate 1, Camp
Bondsteel no later than 10:00 a.m. for bus transportation to the press
briefing site.
Questions:
Q: Where does the money to pay for the imported electricity come from? Does it have any impact on any budgets?
SM: It comes from the Kosovo Consolidated Budget, but primarily it comes from the revenues. We had to get a special subsidy from the Kosovo Budget for some of the repair work and potentially for some of the imports – 15 million DM subsidy this summer.
Q: Could you say how much the imports are costing, roughly?
SM: No, this is just happening now, so I have to find out what the range for the next few weeks. This is just being negotiated now.
Q: How will you resolve the question of the flag in Podujevo?
Susan: I understand the situation has basically been resolved. People who desired the flag to go up on the municipal building, have been give a flag pole in a park near the municipal building and the UN flag will remain on the municipal building.
Q: Do you have any details about the Serbs who disappeared from the Mitrovica hospital?
Susan: We have unofficial reports that they may have been seen heading towards Serbia. I am not sure if that came from KFOR or police. We don’t really have much more information on how they really escaped. They were last checked on five minutes before 1 in the morning and when the room was checked again at 1.15, they had disappeared. A police investigation is going on how this happened.
Q: But can KFOR and UNMIK given an explanation on how is it possible that three, if I can say, war criminals, can escape from the hospital so easily.
SM: The police investigation is still going on and we consider this act a very serious mistake. We don’t know yet exactly what happened. I got two different reports that between 6 to 8 police were assigned to the hospital area, …….inside and more outside.
Q: There was an announcement that a body will be formed by UNMIK to follow the political violence. Can you give some more details if it’s already formed or are you going to form it? What necessitated the setting up of this body? And what kind of statistics do you have on how many political killings have taken place so far?
Susan: The purpose of this cell would be to come up with such statistics and also to be able to define killings as political or not political. The motivation was the recent attacks on the LDK members although at the last IAC meeting, members of the PDK also raised the issues that some of their members have also been targetted. I am not sure if it has already started operating. It consists of the office of Dr. Kouchner, OSCE, UNMIK Police and KFOR.
Q: The PDK has informed you but what about the LDK members until now there have been a couple of cases in which their members have been injured. And what about the last announce of Father Sava? …..(Not clear)
Susan: I saw his announcement and I know he reported the threats to us and requested increase in security. The point of this cell is to determine what kind of incidents are political whether there is a political trend going on, whether the targets are clearly political people in terms of the recent attacks on the LDK, there have been four or five in the last several weeks reported to us. What the cell has to determine whether the attackers are also political or politically motivated. We also have the Central Election Commission which take complaints of political harassment and violence and will investigate those on the political grounds if they relate to the election campaign. The police of course investigate the criminal aspect. The point of this cell is to put it all together and to see what kind of trends there and if there is anything to say about that.
Q: (..)?
SM: The point of this cell is that we are entering a period of elections campaigns. We can not have political violence during that campaign. This is to analyse recent reported crimes that appear to be political, and to come up with a definitive denouncement of it and then to do something about it. That doesn’t mean that it takes the place of the regular criminal work.
Q: Has there been an upsurge of political murders. Is that why you are calling for that special body to be created? Can you say that there have been/ seem to be more political murders for the last few weeks?
SM: It appears to us that particularly LDK local leadership were being victims of several attacks in the last couple of weeks.
Q: So you are saying that it appears to be more politically motivated murders now than there were, say two months ago?
SM: We can not comment on the motivation, we can only say that the targets are politcal figures. We don’t know yet the motivation.
Q: KFOR and UNMIK: There is information saying that there are members of criminal groups from Albania operating here. It has from time to time been confirmed by the police and authorities of Albania. Do you believe that these criminals and criminal groups might be involved in different criminal activities in Kosovo, and what is your information on such groups operating in Kosovo?
SM and CS: We need to check up and get back to you.
Q: There have been a lot of problems with the Dita newspaper. Did you anything to see if the information printed by the newspaper was correct. Did you start an investigation? They were accused for committing war crimes – did you investigate this?
SM: The whole point of the Dita issue is that the publisher never came to the police with the accusations about war criminals. What is published in the press is not an accusation in a formal judicial sense. I don’t know if the police has acted on articles in Dita – Roland, can you talk about that?
OSCE Spokesman, Roland Bless: First of all, the legislation doesn’t prohibit you from reporting alleged war crimes, that is not the issue. The issue is not to do it in a way where you put people’s life and security at risk. You can report about alleged war crimes (..) as a journalist. Second, an investigation did start. It was taken up in this letter that was published by Dita on front page, saying that the editor in chief was coming to an understanding with the head of mission Everts, that he should turn over any evidence he had within a week. The editor in chief decided on his own to go public non the less, thereby violating the law, which lead to the second closure. A police investigation was started because the editor in chief received a visit from police officials. Where that investigation stands I don’t know, and it will be up to the police to communicate the result.
Q: Did you consider the reports. Did you start an investigation to see if these people really committed war crimes? This is for the UNMIK Police.
SM: He just explained the procedures, that the publisher would give the details to ambassador Everts, but the police don’t in general start an investigation based on a media report.
Q: Does that mean that you do not consider these reports at all?
SM: No, it means that if anyone has information on crime, they should bring it to the police.
RB: As far as we know the police have started an investigation.
Q: President Milosevic will release the Canadians and the Britons only on one condition(..) this suggestion came from Russia, China and France.
SM: I heard about it. The proposal does not involve UNMIK. They were nationals of Britain and Canada. The whole thing is being taken up by the governments of Canada and Great Britain.
Q: Do you have any information on the closure of several clinics in Pristina?
CS: Yesterday Carabinieri closed five clinics in which doctors were performing illegal abortions. They launched their own investigations more than two months ago. They acted under the penal code of the Autonomous Province of Kosovo, under Article 37, which talks about pregnancy and the interruption thereof. The information has been turned over to a Pristina prosecutor.
Q: Under what authority did the Carabinieri launch the investigation, when they are under COMKFOR.
CS: I will have to find out about that.