YU-Assets

Radio UNMIK

By Birol Urcan

Hello and welcome, this is UNMIK on air

Murtez Shala from Vidishiq village in Mitrovica municipality worked for 28 years as a miner in the Trepça mines.

Now retired he lives from a 40 euros per month pension.

When working in the Trepça mines Murtez and his colleagues were

paid well.

This lasted until 1989, when the Yugoslav regime of that time made hundreds and thousands of Kosovo Albanian workers decide to resign from their jobs and boycott the regime.

Miners too were among these workers

“From the time we were fired everything went bad.

In the villages we did not have any income, no help from anybody. We tried to survive with cows and other animals ”

The miners of Trepça used to dig up around 30 kilograms of gold per month, which were usually send to Belgrade on a monthly basis.

This wealth was used for the needs of the federation including Kosovo.

In April this year representatives from the different countries formerly part of Yugoslavia reached an agreement on how to divide the available assets from ex-Yugoslavia in the form of gold and foreign currency.

The officials at the meeting in Skopje did not decide on the exact amount of money each of the 5 present countries will get because the total value of the wealth is still unclear. However, they did define the percentages each should receive.

Croatia will get 23%, Slovenia 16 % Bosnia and Herzegovina 15.5% Macedonia 7.5% And Serbia –Montenegro 38 % of the total fortune.

Kosovo did not take part in the process of sharing the wealth.

Haki Shatri Minister of finance and economy of Kosovo explains:

Kosovo still didn’t define its political status and as it is could not take part in talks on division of the assets, or could not take it’s part from those assets.

According to the Minister this doesn’t mean that for Kosovo this matter is closed.

Just because other federal units were included in these talks and got their shares, it doesn’t mean that they took Kosovo’s share.

Minister Shatri sees Kosovo’s part as included in the 38% share of Serbia and Montenegro and believes this will be a point of discussion after there’s more certainty on Kosovo’s future status.

Also the Riinvest institute headed by Muhamet Mustafa is convinced that Kosovo can still claim its share

For the future ….it is obvious that Kosovo can not be excluded. It is clear that what belonged to Kosovo is inside the state called Serbia and Montenegro.

Because they have inherited the international right, they are successor of ex Yugoslav federation.

The assets of ex Yugoslavia are worth millions of Euros but the debts are far higher. However the billions of Euros that Yugoslavia owed have already been shared by the former republics when they became independent. The debts of Kosovo, according to some experts around 1.2 billion Euros, were taken over by Serbia and Montenegro.

So unfortunately in the end Kosovars should not expect to receive a big sum of money from the assets of former Yugoslavia.

This was all for today, thank you for listening.

In tomorrow’s program Special Representative Jessen Petersen answers questions from a group of journalists coming from throughout the region. So stay tuned!

Good-bye.