UNMIK on AIR

Practicing Dialogue

July 2004

By Andrea Saula

SLUG: The OSCE Mission in Kosovo organized a roundtable bringing together local and international agencies from southeastern Europe to discuss ways to enhance dialogue and co-operation between Kosovo's communities.

Hello and welcome, this is UNMIK on Air.

For two days, representatives from forty organizations shared lessons learned and explored strategies to improve the chances for dialogue in the aftermath of the March riots.

Besnik Tahiri national political advisor with OSCE Democratization department explains the idea is to bring together local and international organizations that had been already engaged in the dialogue process in Kosovo.

CUT 1 Track 0.04 We had representatives from Kosovo, from the region, from Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and the representatives from Western European countries and also from the United states, from the Institute for Peace. The debate was quite open, sometimes with critical tone for methodical practices but always trying to reach a kind of common goal on how to proceed with this complex policy of Southeastern Europe.

The participants included representatives of Freedom House, the Civil

Dialogue partners -- Mother Theresa Society and the Center for regionalism-- the Geneva Center for Security Policy, the Harvard Negotiations Project, the Kosovo Institute for Policy Research and Development, and many more.

Two parallel working groups, one led by the OSCE Mission's Director of

Political Affairs, Bryan Hopkinson, and the other by Nina Suomalainen representing the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe, aimed to develop concrete recommendations.

Besnik Tahiri says that participants agreed to continue sharing information.

CUT 2 Track 0.05 The group number 1 was ‘what functioned and what didn’t functioned in the past in the dialogue process’ and second group focused mainly how to perceive the civil society dialogue in the future in Kosovo. There were some interesting recommendations. One of them is also to continue to share basically to draw a kind of report from this, to share recommendations and basically to meet again and see what would be the way to continue especially after March events that cause particular challenges and boundaries for dialogue process.

Tahiri adds, the idea was not to give a precise political agenda to decision makers to precede dialogue, but to point out that dialogue must continue.

CUT 3 Track 0.06 The aim of the meeting was to explore and to asses past methodologies and practices, currant approach and future practice that would be implemented. Let’s say that kind of political message from this meeting is that the dialogue must continue. It is the only way forward for this society but also for the region as such and also that is quite important to have locals involved in this to have kind of local ownership and in practice to reach the grass roots on democracy building and peace building.

Nina Suomalainen representing the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe also emphasizes the role of local engagement. Suomalainen says she hopes that the OSCE, UNMIK and PISG will consider and incorporate the recommendations from the civil society.

CUT 4 Track 0.02 It’s important that NGOs and civil society take more, take their full role in promoting stability in Kosovo and of course civil society represent people from cities, countryside, different places and it is important for decision makers of all different sides to listen what civil society and NGOs have to say. It’s very important that they have very good points, they are open and they rather promote stability, cooperation, and development of the region then conflict.

Besnik Tahiri with OSCE explains that the idea of this conference was to avoid direct participations of politicians but to have them close enough to be in the position to weigh the NGOs’ proposals.

CUT 5 Track 0.07 we didn’t invite PISG representatives in this conference as we wanted to avoid politicians and institutional leaders but we had the Prime Minister last night on out cocktail event where he had very, very strong address in support to dialogue process in support to these organizations and individuals that are fighting with their own, let’s say same sides in their societies.

Back announce: Tahiri announced that the civil dialogue will continue to move forward and concentrate on practical issues, like how to build dialogue.

That is all for this edition of UNMIK on Air, thanks for listening and stay tuned for more.