UNMIK-KFOR-OSCE-UNHCR-EU Press Briefing: 29 September 2000
UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
KFOR Spokesman Major Steven
R. Shapell
OSCE Spokesman Roland Bless
UNHCR Spokeswoman Paula
Ghedini
EU Spokesman Mike Todd
UNMIK Spokeswoman Susan Manuel
SRSG met the Security Council
The meeting between SRSG Bernard Kouchner and the Security Council on Wednesday is summarized in a press release outside. Please see me if you are interested in the complete official transcript of the briefing….
Among the topics raised by Dr. Kouchner was the issue of missing and
detained people from Kosovo. He expressed his fears that the issue of
those detained in Serbia would not be resolved unless the international
community continued to press Belgrade and he described to the Council the
ongoing hunger strike in Dubrava by some 60 former prisoners who were
protesting the continued incarceration of their
colleagues.
Hunger strikers
Also on Wednesday, Dr. Eric Chevallier, the SRSG's Special Adviser, met with the protestors at Dubrava and managed to end the hunger strike. He informed the group that Dr. Kouchner would be raising the issue at the Security Council and that he would raise it as well in the Interim Administrative Council meeting next Tuesday. Dr. Chevallier also brought a medical team to assess and assist those on hunger strike, several of whom were in poor condition due to problems stemming from their previous imprisonment. He also pledged to assist in the rehabilitation of the gravesite at Dubrava. Members of the Kosovo Protection Corps will begin tomorrow to bring the gravesite into an acceptable and dignified condition. A delegation of the ex-hunger strikers will visit the SRSG and IAC on Tuesday.
UNMIK Police
The Spanish Special Police Unit has been active in weapons collection, and yesterday intercepted an Albanian-registered Mercedes traveling from the Albanian border near the Morina crossing. Inside the car were six AK 47 rifles, 78 grenades, 72 detonators and 10,000 rounds of 7.62 ammunition. Two men were arrested-one Albanian and one K. Albanian who was later released as unconnected with the arms.
In another weapons search, UNMIK police and KFOR in Srbica (Rudnik and Kotore villages) recovered a large cache of illegal weapons and ammunition and arrested three suspects in whose homes the weapons were found. These included Faton Hajrizi, also a suspect in the murder of a Russian soldier last year.
Police from the Pristina regional HQ continue to investigate the robbery of the Swiss liaison office on Mother Teresa street, reported early yesterday morning. Criminals removed a 250-kg safe containing 1.4 million DM by scaling the building’s walls, lowering themselves by ropes, breaking into the office and pushing the safe out the window..
In southern Mitrovica, at 2:20 this morning, UNMIK police intervened during a robbery in progress at a pharmacy. Police received a call reporting a woman screaming for help. One police car went to the scene and found several people screaming and bleeding. They reported that four masked men were robbing and assaulting them. Police officers secured the inhabitants of the house behind a cement barrier and attempted to block the criminals, who were firing as they managed to escape. One gun was recovered by a KPS officer.
Post office
Post Kosovo (PTK) is starting International Parcel Mail from 2 October 2000. Parcels can be booked at any of the PTK post offices for any destination in the world. The maximum limit for Post Parcel is 20 kilograms. Rates for parcel dispatch will be displayed in all post offices. Restrictions and prohibitions for International Parcel Dispatch from Kosovo will also be available/displayed in the post office.
Youth Week
The First Youth Week in Kosovo begins Sunday, with this year's theme being “Tolerance, No violence.” Activities will take place in different regions and cities of Kosovo.
The Youth Week will be launched by the Co-heads of the Department in Mitrovica, with a Music Concert in the Confidence Zone, on Sunday from 18:30-22:00.
Press Kits on the Youth Week are available outside this room after the press briefing. And the UNMIK co-head Bernardo Cocco is in the audience should you have any questions.
KPC
Training of the Kosovo Protection Corps is intensifying: 200 members will participate in a three-week Introductory Course, starting on October 2, as the first phase of the establishment of the School of Civil Protection in Kosovo. This course focuses on emergency operations management and led by experts throughout Europe.
Also six senior KPC members will be attending a three-week course in
civil protection at the
School of Civil Protection in Florival,
Belgium from 2-20 October.
This course will provide direct contact and
exposure to the work and activities of an operational civil protection
organization. The KPC participants will depart Slatina Airport for Belgium
on 2 October and will be available from 1:30 to 3 for any interested
media. Please see the press releases outside on these courses.
KFOR Spokesman Major Steven R. Shapell
KFOR Commander Visits Albania
Yesterday, KFOR Commander Lt. Gen. Juan Ortuño continued his program of
farewell visits with a trip to Albania. Gen. Ortuño relinquishes
command of KFOR on Oct. 16, 2000.
While in Albania Gen. Ortuño visited
with the staff of Communications Zone West in Durres, thanking them for
their continued support of the KFOR mission.
After his visit to Durres, Gen. Ortuño went to Tirana and met with the President of Albania and the Albanian Minister of Defense. Both the President and the Minister of Defense stressed the total commitment of Albania in support of NATO and to the NATO mission in Kosovo.
Houses Searched; Weapons Seized
Yesterday morning in Multinational Brigade North, KFOR French soldiers conducted a combined search operation with the UNMIK Police of six Kosovar Albanian houses in Runik / Rudnik and Skenderaj / Srbica. The items discovered in the search included two AK-47 assault rifles, a pistol, two hunting rifles, a 76-millemeter recoilless rifle, an RPG-7 rocket launcher with two rockets, four grenades, 56 rounds of rifle ammunition, a small amount of TNT explosive and an electrical device. UNMIK Police arrested two Kosovar Albanian men at the scene, including one man wanted in connection with the death of a KFOR Russian Battalion soldier in March. The men are now detained at the Mitrovice / Mitrovica jail.
As the KFOR soldiers were leaving the village of Runik / Rudnik, about 150 Kosovar Albanians tried to prevent their departure, demanding the release of one of the arrested men. The KFOR soldiers departed the village by another route.
UNHCR Spokeswoman Paula Ghedini
Under the general programme that is being supported by UNMIK to assist the Victim Recovery and Identification Commission (VRIC), UNHCR is providing transport for the coffins and corpses of those persons being reburied properly now after the exhumations from the mass graves throughout various sites in Kosovo. This will be an ongoing operation for as long as it is needed, and we will keep update you with the progress, and so will UNMIK and the VRIC as it occurs.
Under the function of the humanitarian coordinator, UNHCR’s offices together with OCHA and other UN agencies, KFOR, NGOs and donors have begun a biweekly winter preparedness working group. We are not expecting the kind of problems that we faced last winter in terms of emergency humanitarian assistance. However, we are aware that there are very many areas throughout Kosovo that will need special assistance. What we are trying to do is meet everyone on a regular basis and discover where the gaps are so that these are the focus areas for intervention from the international community. So far what has been done is an assessment of all the donor, funding and projects for the winter have been put into a framework that we are going to be using as a database in conjunction with is planned for the UN agencies. A risk assessment and risk analysis-questionaire has been passed on to all international NGOs working in Kosovo, and we are doing a fire-wood, heating and cold assessment for all of the villages throughout Kosovo.
Eric Morris, the UNHCR Special Envoy, will be travelling up to Belgrade this weekend where he will be assessing what is being done for the Kosovar Serb IDPs that are going to remain in Serbia for the winter, and found out what the operational objectives are – not only for UNHCR operations but also that of the government in Serbia, and see what kind of provisions have been made today.
OSCE Spokesman Roland Bless
Rules on Polling Stations
Today, I have a few items on elections only. First, the rules on polling stations were approved by the Central Election Commission a while ago. Now that the elections are coming close to the time, we would like to make those rules known to a wider audience. It explains the design of 700 voters per station and the message for the voters is: “please go and vote where you are registered”. That is for people to find help so that they can be guided to the actual polling stations. It also sets out the rules for the polling stations committees and how they have to be compiled. They are comprised of four members and one chairperson and they reflect the different communities in each municipality. No person who is not registered as a voter can be on a polling station committee, who is appointed office or is a candidate himself, and also if he is member of political party leadership. You will find a press release to that extend and the voluminous law attached to it
Journalists denied access
The second item is the incident that we had. We have been notified that at the rally of LDK at the sport center at the University of Pristina held on 27 September, some journalists were denied access. Of course, this is against the rules. Journalists are given reference in the electoral law. They cannot be stopped for doing their work. As a matter of fact, parties have an interest of having journalists there, because that is how their gospel gets spread. The case is being investigated by the CEC. The Election Complaints and Appeal sub-Committee has met yesterday. No decision on pending cases was taken. They will meet again next Tuesday. The CEC has no meeting this week. It will meet next week also on Tuesday.
Margin of Error
There is an article in Zeri this morning which recapitulates some of the facts regarding the error margin in the provisional voting list, and it quotes the Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry of Austria, the country which is the chair of the OSCE this year, as having said that 20% of the data are somehow infected. I have checked with the Ministry this morning in Vienna. They said he had not used any such figure. He has addressed the permanent Council of OSCE where he referred to the error margin as being below 5%. I warm this up a little bit because I do understand that there is still doubt and skepticism in the public with this voters list as it is a tremendous task. None disputes that there were wrong entries. The clean up goes on. I have said earlier that we were expecting to finish that by the end of this week, and correct it. It takes the weekend on top of it. By beginning of next week they plan to print the final voters list including photographs. The printing is done in Vienna. I have got a couple of details on this. It may sound boring, but just to show you how the work is progressing. First there was an estimated 5-6% of data not entered. This has been brought down at 0% now. About 10 to 11 % of the cases have invalid registration center number. That was brought down to 00.2%. There are other fields, which are still full of errors. We will have misspelled names on voting dates (?). That would be on the range from 10 to 15%. And we will have corrupted photos, which cannot be seen on the screen, because we had power cuts on a regular basis during the registration, and the data entering equipment are very sensitive to power cuts. We do not have percentage of those yet, but with reference to photographs that’s why ir is important that voters were doing the registration strip, and also a picture ID. After the clean up is completed, we will give you our assessment on what the actual error marge is really is, since it’s an important element of the voting process and education.
PDK Rally
I don’t have any report on yesterday’s PDK rally in Kosovo Polje/Fushe Kosovo which was prohibited from being held by the election Director, for security considerations. I quote the letter “ I hereby prohibit the PDK from organizing the rally at the planned time and location. However, in conjunction with the local CIVIPOL and KFOR, PDK can arrange a new time or venue”. This is the Elections Director who can prohibit rally from going on if it interferes with security concerns. As a matter of fact, political parties have a right to hold rally. They don’t need a permit. They only have to notify it 96 hours ahead.
The last point is the next background briefing Tuesday, where we will focus on voters’ concerns. We have done a survey on what really are the top items on the list of voters, and that should be of interest to you, and we expect these items will also go into the campaign and help to sharpen the campaign.
EU Spokesman Mike Todd
Heating
Plans are underway to begin the District Heating in Kosovo. Preparations have started and negotiations on ensuring adequate funding are being conducted. Gjakova’s district heating system will begin operations next week.
The payment of bills remains a real issue for the heating sector. It is a responsibility for industrial and individual consumers alike and has a direct impact on the service that can be offered. An international expert is currently drafting proposals for an advanced tariff system, to help provide a system that ensures bills are paid.
Power Update
The power situation remained stable this week. Units A1 and A3 have both been returned to service. The recently re-started B1 unit is not showing any sign of problems. The major overhaul of Kosovo B2 continues.
Customs
Another very successful week for Customs last week with revenue collections totalling in excess of 7.5m DM, a new record amount.
Transport
In terms of the road repair programme, there are now major infrastructure developments underway throughout Kosovo.
Work funded by the European Agency for Reconstruction has begun on the rebuilding of the Vranido bridge on the Pristina-Podujevo road. This work is expected to be completed by January of next year. Work on the Klina Bridge will be finished by end of October, when it will be re-opened.
The by-pass around Lozica bridge on the Pristina-Peja road, originally made by KFOR, has now been completely asphalted.
The European Agency is also pleased to announce the arrival of the second asphalt recycling machine, working on the Pristina-Blace road. The works on this road will be finished by early November, working at a rate of about 3 kilometres/day!
Works continue on the Tetovo road. So far 15 km from the border have been completed. In the next two weeks, extensive work will be carried out blasting rocks which overhang the road, representing a serious hazard. This will cause some traffic disruptions.
Finally, works at Blace border will start next week. This involves widening the main road at the Border from 2 to 4 lanes. Again, there will be traffic disturbance, particularly with regards to parking around the border point.
The European Agency for Reconstruction will rely heavily on close
co-operation with KFOR and UNMIK Police to assist in controlling traffic
during all these works, which are vital in the run up to winter.
Questions:
Q: Which Albanian political party is considered by UNMIK to be the biggest in Kosovo? Which areas in Kosovo are closed down for political rallies – so far, I understand from yesterday, PDK was prohibited to hold a rally in Fush Kosove?
SM: We don’t have a list of how many members the parties have. They had to submit a minimum number of names to be registered as a party, 4000-5000 names I believe.
RB: We don’t have these membership figures either. For the upcoming municipal elections there are two parties which are running in 29 municipalities and one that is running in 26: AAK and LDK in 29, and PDK in 26. For your second question: there is no area that is off limits. It is assessed on case-by-case basis. The reasons for yesterday’s interdiction of the rally to proceed is that it was very close to a Serb inhabited area. It would also have coincided with the arrival of the train from up north which is frequented very strongly by members of the Serb community. These were the reasons for yesterday’s decision.
Q: The department that is in charge of issuing the travel documents and other civil documents has, according to our information, stopped working for a couple of months. Can you confirm that, and what was the case? They stopped working yesterday or the day befor, and they will cease their work for a couple of months.
SM: What’s happened is that the travel documents can not be issued until after the ID cards are issued, at least that is how it was scheduled. Currently, specimens of the travel documents are with some 50 countries, waiting their approval. We had prepared some of the offices to begin taking applications for travel documents. We can’t take the applications now until the travel documents are near to be ready for being issued. Therefore staff have been re-deployed in working on the registration and ID card issues, and the refinement of data collection. It’s not that they have been closed permanently, the people are just working on something else until the travel documents are ready to be issued. The priority now is to get the ID cards ready.
Q: It appears now that Milosevic has made the announcement for the run off. Would you be organizing renewed witnessing of the Yugoslav elections?
SM: If there is a legitimate run off we will be witnessing it.
Q: What is a legitimate run off?
SM I don’t think election results have been finalized or a run off agreed to by the international community or the opposition as well.
Q: But the federal election commission has made an announcement and the government of Yugoslavia is preparing to have run off elections on 8 October.
SM: We have not yet made a decision.
Q: Today is 29 September. Have you been able to finalize party political funding. Many of them complain they don’t even have a phone or offices.
RB: Parties received some cash donations on Thursday and on Wednesday from that part which is dedicated to general campaign contributions. They did not receive however, any of the money that is meant for production of TV and radio spots. It is an Austrian NGO, which actually handles distribution or disbursement of this money. It’s not the OSCE. That’s more for accountancy reasons which probably leaves that better in the hands of the NGO than with a big bureaucracy.
Q: This is just to clarify the situation regarding the PDK rally yesterday. It’s my understanding that political parties have to notify the OSCE that they want to have a rally. In principle they are allowed to do that unless they are denied for security reasons on a case by case basis.
RB: That’s correct. A rally could also be denied from being held if two parties compete for the same spot, especially about the elections we will see parties wanting the same central square in a town, for instance. So there has to be a mechanism.
Q: So when the parties are notified a day or two in advance of the rally.
RB: The CEC has given this authority to the director of elections Jeff Fischer, who signed that letter to the PDK.
Q: And the PDK was presumably informed. Yesterday they didn’t know they were not allowed to have a rally.
RB: No, they even proposed a different venue on the day. So I don’t see how they wouldn’t have known.
Q: Which ever group is investigating the journalists not being allowed into the LDK rally yesterday. A lot of us had problems not with Rugova’s security but with the UNMIK Police and the security who accompanied Jock Covey or the OSCE representative who was there. And they were incredibly hostile and pretty rude and pretty physical in their determination not to allow us in. So I would suggest you talk to them.
RB: I will take that up. But it’s not election related. It’s something
for UNMIK.
Q: How many NGOs have been burgled over the last few months
and do you know if the police has any progress in the investigations.
SM: We will have to look it up. But I remember at least half a dozen in the last year, if not more. I don’t believe there have been any arrests.
Q: Do you have any more reports of refugees coming in from Montenegro into Western Kosovo in the last few days.
PG: The journalists are looking for these refugees now. But In fact their numbers that came across has stabilized. We have some indication that some people have already started going back. This is from the Montenegro side of our office.
Q: This concert is going to be held in the confidence area. Isn’t this rather in contravention of what the confidence area is meant to be about. Which is about allegedly preventing large scale gatherings and groups of people getting together.
SM: No, it’s entirely in the spirit of the confidence zone. It is supposed to be about tolerance and about joyful celebrations of tolerance and reconciliation. The types of group activities that the confidence zone was designed to prevent were of a more hostile nature.
Q: Can you say when will Dr. Kouchner’s appointment as head of UNHCR decided.
SM: No there has been no selection made for the next person to hold that post.
Q: Has any country apart from Albania recognized the UNMIK travel document?
SM: Some half dozen countries have recognized it. I will get the names for you.
Q: What are the modalities for the selection of the head of UNHCR. When would we know whether he has got the job or not.
PG: We are very concerned ourselves. Right now what we do know is that there is a short list of candidates. We have no idea what the status is on how the discussion has gone. What will happen is that the SG will produce to the General Assembly his candidate of choice. Normally the precedent is that the UN will confirm the person who is given as the candidate by the SG. But so far it seems like it’s up for grabs. Dr. Bernard Kouchner has come forward, as you said. There are a number of other names on the list, including assistant high commissioner Mr. Pedersen, from the UNHCR, as well as several other former government heads or government representatives from various donor nations. We expect some name tentatively by November end.
Q: Why does Dr. Bernard Kouchner visit the political rallies of only some political parties. And is it proper?
SM: Theoretically he or his representative will attend any rally to which he is invited.