UN Radio

Fostering Interethnic Dialogue

By Andrea Saula

Hello and Welcome. This is UN Radio in Kosovo,

The International non governmental organization “Project on Ethnic Relations” succeeded to gather heads and senior officials of Kosovo institutions, Kosovo political parties and leaders of the Kosovo Serb community.

The roundtable focused on interethnic relations in Kosovo towards the implementation of standards was held on Tuesday in Pristina.

The participants among which were the President of Kosovo Ibrahim Rugova, party leaders Hashim Thaci, Veton Suroi, Oliver Ivanovic, PDSRSG Lawrence Rossin and heads of diplomatic liaison offices in Pristina, tried to determine where Kosovo’s stands when interethnic dialogue is in question.

After the meeting Livia Plaks, the president of the “Project on Ethnic Relations” had very positive impressions.

Actuality No. 01 we would all like to see this continue and we urged the sides around the table to sit down together, to have a dinner and just continue discussion. It looked like there might be a possibility for that. We cannot give you a calendar, unfortunately but we are hoping that everyone is aware that the clock is running.

The OSCE Mission in Kosovo hosted the roundtable. Johan de Velde is the Director of Democratization Department of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo.

Actuality No.02 This is particularly something what we as the OSCE would like to host and also would like to host in he future.

Especially we have a long-standing collaboration with the Mrs. Plaks and I value this collaboration very much.

Since last March and the breakout of violence throughout of Kosovo relations among K-Albanian and K-Serbian community became weaker. It came to that point that the majority of K-Serbs boycotted Kosovo’s institutions.

A possibility of future Serbian participation was also on the agenda of this meeting.

Livia Plaks with the “Project on Ethnic Relations” sees some progress reagarding this issue.

Actuality No.3 I was very pleased to see the question from the Albanian side asking the Serbian side how can we make it easier to you to attend the working groups on decentralization and other issues because we are trying very hard to see whether we can make it easier for the Serbian side to attend such working groups.

Besides the state of interethnic dialogue, the participants discussed, security and decentralization issues as well the inevitable issue of standards.

Actuality No. 4 It is obvious to all of us but also but there’s a lot but again there’s a lot more to be done. That is also obvious and issue related to security need to addressed, it seams, more encouragement of the minorities attending structures related to standards need to be encouraged. Therefore I would say there’s still work to be done. We are all very much aware of the progress that has been done especially in the last few months.

“The Project on Ethnic Relations” has been working for years on organizing dialogues in the Balkan region between governments and the leaders of the largest ethnic populations. They are working in close cooperation with several governments in Western Europe, the US Government, NATO, Council of Europe, and the OSCE amongst other.