UNMIK-UNHCR-OSCE Press Briefing: 8 December 2000

UNMIK Spokeswoman Claire Trevena
UNHCR Spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort
OSCE Spokesman Sven Lindholm

UNMIK Spokeswoman Claire Trevena

UNMIK Police

Following yesterday's incident in Mitrovica, two people have been released. One person has been detained for robbery; she will appear in court later today. At the moment police are not patrolling.

The language assistant who was believed to have been abducted, fled the situation and has since phoned to say she is okay - and is in Novi Pazar with her parents. She will be back at work Monday.

ID Cards
A forewarning - next week we will be holding a press conference on the distribution of a very limited number of ID cards. Announcements will be made through the media. The press conference is likely to be Tuesday. We will put out a media alert to warn you. Registration has meanwhile restarted across Kosovo.

SRSG
The SRSG, Dr Bernard Kouchner, goes to Strasbourg and Brussels this weekend. In Strasbourg he'll hold a series of meetings with different groups of party leaders of the European parliament including the president of the parliament, Mme Nicole Fontaine.  In Brussels he will be the key note speaker at les Grandes Conferences Catholiques where he will speak on the theme of the right to intervene. He will be back in Kosovo Wednesday

Visit to the Detained
Twenty Kosovo Alabanians have visited there relatives being held in Belgrade central prison. They took clothes and personal packages. 20 other packages were handed over to other Kosovo Albanians in the prison. The visits were organized by the UNMIK Bureau for Detained and Missing, IOM and the FRY Presidential Office for Refugees, IDPs and Missing. It's expected similar visits will be arranged in other detention centres in the near future. There will be a press release on this later today.

Road accidents
Next Monday, following our regular briefing there will be a briefing by the co-heads, of the department of health, KFOR and the police - the subject: road accidents. This is of serious concern to the health department who deal daily with the victims of traffic accidents and for the police who also are trying to cope with dangerous driving. That's at 12 o'clock Monday, after our regular briefing.

Also on health the Department of Health along with the World Health Organisation and the Institute of Public Health have set up an AIDS-HIV committee. Its aim is to develop an Aids prevention programme for Kosovo. Its first task is to carry out a survey among students aged between 14 and 19 on knowledge, attitude and practice. It also wants to set up voluntary counselling services in Kosovo.

Indian SPU
The Indian SPU is holding an endurance marathon on Sunday. It is for Kosovo police service members, UNMIK, KFOR and the SPUs. The race is 42 kilometres long - running from the Indian SPU base in Pristina to the lake on the Pristina-Gnijlane road and back.

UNHCR Spokeswoman Astrid van Genderen Stort

Southern Serbia
Families continue to return to southern Serbia from Kosovo with some 400 people returning on Wednesday and around 200 on Thursday. The estimated number of those who remain in Kosovo stands now at 3,400. People were reported to have returned to Bujanovac, Presevo, Veliki Trnovac (Trnovc I Madhe) and Nasalce. The reason for return at this point is threefold: 1) the returnees deem the security situation in certain villages in and outside the ground safety zone (GSZ) less threatening than before.  2) the returnees do not want to become a burden on their host families, and 3) the increasing presence of the international community in the area is reassuring to some of the returnees. During the height of the tension in southern Serbia, close to 5,000 people sought refuge in Kosovo for fear of armed conflict between the Serbian forces and Albanian rebels near the ground safety zone.

UNHCR's Special Envoy for FRY, Mr. Eric Morris, has shuttled between Belgrade and southern Serbia since the weekend, meeting with the authorities and villages in Bujanovac and Presevo. On Wednesday he visited affected villages along the GSZ, including Nasalce, Lucane and Trnovac---many of those remaining in Kosovo say they come from these villages.

Villagers said some families have fled because they were afraid of the build up of the Serb forces around their villages. Indeed UNHCR team came across police checkpoints along the road between Bujanovac and Presevo and especially at the entrance of Veliki Trnovac, just west of Bujanovac. There was a heavy presence of military in and around Lucane, a village now divided by a bridge, practically devoid of civilians. We spoke to seven of the approximately 15 villagers remaining in the town, a town which used to hold 1400 people, who expressed their concern about the freedom of movement in the town and their wish for the return of the population. The villagers spoke of some harassment and intimidation by the police at these checkpoints, but overall, there have been no reports of atrocities against civilians reported during the past weeks of increased tension. People nevertheless expressed fear and distrust towards the police and military, based on the memories of the events in Kosovo in the past years. In Lucane the remaining population was living on stocks that would last at least another two months. Access to food and basic commodities were mentioned as a problem that was addressed with the authorities in Belgrade.

In Belgrade, the Special Envoy met with the Federal Ministers of Interior and Nationalities and Ethnic Communities, as well as the Presidents's Office, and expressed the need to adopt confidence building measures to ease the current tension and to allow the people to return to their villages. He also mentioned the need to address the structural discrimination of minorities in southern Serbia for long term stability in the region. UNHCR will continue to support the current effort of the FRY government to resolve peacefully the potentially explosive situation in southern Serbia. UNCHR is also presently looking into increasing its presence in the area.

Fiftieth anniversary
On 14 December, UNHCR will commemorate its 50th anniversary through different activities around the world. In Pristina a reception will be held at the Illirija Hotel for which invitations will be sent out. The book 'State of the World Refugees, 50 years' will be presented on this occasion.

In Geneva, where the UNHCR's head office is located, there will be a concert organized on the same day. It will be the largest gathering of refugee musicians ever to mark the 50th
anniversary of the UN refugee agency. Djordje Balasevic will be among the guest stars to appear that evening, joined by refugee children's rights activist, Youssou N'Dour. The concert, entitled Respect will be broadcast live on the website, together with refugee voices from around the world, starting 20.00 hrs at www.unhcr-50.org. During that day the launch of the Refugee Education Trust will also be announced, a trust fund which will enable refugees with few opportunities to receive education.

OSCE Spokesman Sven Lindholm

Legal aid workshop
On December 8-9, the Legal Community Support Section of the OSCE will be hosting a two-day "Workshop on Legal Aid in Civil Matters". The immediate aim of the workshop is to improve the current state of the legal aid sector through discussions about the general structure existing and about what system should be adopted in Kosovo. Domestic NGOs will offer their experience and different models of legal aid programmes currently functioning in Kosovo and other countries in the region to the discussion about the present system. The workshop will also take up areas of law not currently covered by legal aid programmes and formulate concrete suggestions for a legal aid system in Kosovo.

NGO Resource Centre
Today at 3 p.m., the OSCE will be inaugurating the NGO Resource Center in Mitrovica at its permanent premises. Since February 2000, the Resource Center has been actively assisting in numerous areas to build the capabilities/capacities of local NGO and civil society structures. The center has coordinated with international partners on several peace-building projects for Mitrovica, which have been designed to build the capacity of the municipality's residents to resolve community issues in a constructive and peaceful manner, and re-establish relations among non-political leaders. Media are invited to attend.

Financial disclosure
Yesterday was the deadline for political entities to hand in post-elections financial disclosure forms, in accordance with Electoral Rule 12. Full details will be available next week.

Domestic Violence
As a follow-up to the Symposium on Domestic Violence, this was the first time in Kosovo that this topic was highlighted and it was pleasing to see that both the judiciary and the Kosovo Police Service were in attendance and interested in this problem. This, however, was just the first step and now there is need to change attitudes and how to properly deal with domestic violence. The organisers considered the seminar a success as a young generation of police were enthusiastic to learn more. This was especially true of the women officers. It was very important that police were targeted as this demonstrated a means to increase their efficiency in the pre-trial procedure in evidence gathering.

Questions

Q: How many people are you going to need to monitor the Serb elections?

SL: That's a question that you will have refer to the ODHIR office in Belgrade. They are dealing with the operational plans.

Q: Can you tell us something about Dr. Kouchner's successor, the Danish contender, and how long is Dr. Kouchner going to stay here.

CT: As we keep telling you, Dr. Kouchner will stay until his announcement is announced. The announcement is coming out of New York at noon New York time and we will issue it as soon as it is made in New York.

Q: You said there was heavy military presence in Lucan. Is it within the buffer zone or on the edge of the buffer zone?

AvGS: The heavy military presence is obviously outside the ground safety zone. Lucan has one part in the ground safety zone, but the military presence is on one side of the town and they are controlling the bridge but they are not coming across the bridge. On the other side we have not seen any presence.

Q: So it is on the edge of the buffer zone?

AvGS: Yes.

Q: Do you have any decision now on the Serb elections. Are they going to be held in the Serb enclaves?

CT: No, we have still got no decision on that.

Q: For UNHCR. You said Mr. Morris stated that there is need to decrease structural discrimination in the Presevo Valley. Who is being discriminated against?

AvGS: What he means by that is that when we were visiting the area we received several complaints from the Albanian community that there was discrimination and it was in various areas, in field of education, there was under-representation of Albanians in political parties, in police force and several other issues and these are issues Mr. Morris has addressed and raised with the Serbian authorities and that they have actually been willing to talk about and think about for the future.

Q: Has he made any recommendations on how to resolve these problems?

AvGS: He has in these meeting basically raised these issues, raised the concerns that we have received from the various people we spoke to. But what solutions will be found is something to be worked out and of course for the FRY government itself to work out.

Q: People in that area fear and distrust the police. Is there reason for that, since you were there.

AvGS: First of all this fear and distrust stems from the fact that the troops that are deployed in that area are the troops that served in Kosovo before and there is basic distrust because they know what happened in Kosovo last year and they feel that something might happen again. Now there is no sign that any real harassment has happened but still there are small incidents and people are very suspicious of what could happen.

Q: You described the situation as quite a potentially explosive situation in southern Serbia. Can you tell more about what is the potential for what to explode and are you implying that you fear a major humanitarian crisis and influx of IDPs in Kosovo if fighting were to resume.

AvGS: If fighting were to resume, if an incident were to happen, it could lead to a big explosion, a small incident, even one killing inside the ground safety zone or outside it, could lead to a massive explosion. However, in our talking to different parties and naturally we talked to Albanian human rights activists, Albanian and Serbian political party leaders, the government, to a lot of different actors. All those we have spoken to have expressed the need for restraint and they are encouraging the international community to increase its presence there. So our feeling is that …….don't want the situation to explode. But there is a possibility.