Week in Review

22 July 2005

By Jens Laerke

Hello and welcome to the week in review as reported by the international press and the Media of Kosovo:

The bridge in Mitrovica in northern Kosovo - which connects the ethnic communities of Serb and Albanian - was opened for traffic 24 hours a day this week.

The bridge which spans the Ibar river, will remain open in a bid to bring the divided communities together, said a spokesman for the UN police.

Over the past six years, the bridge has been the scene of violent clashes between the Albanian majority and the Serbian minority.

Last month, NATO KFOR peacekeepers handed over the control of the bridge to the UN police.

That move prompted protests by local Serbs, but there were no reports of serious troubles during the week.

The media reported Tuesday on a meeting between UNMIK chief Soren jessen-Petersen and leaders of the non-serbian minorities in Kosovo.

The main topics of discussion were the political process and the overall security situation in the province.

Representatives of the non-Serb minorities said that they want to be part of the political process, but that more attention should be paid to their concerns.

They especially raised the issues of employment, language, returns, education, access to the media, and decentralization.

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The provisional institutions in Kosovo is set to take charge of police and justice affairs by the end of the year, and two new ministries will be established.

The transfer of competencies in these sensitive areas will be subject to monitoring by the UN and a‘ vigourous accountability policy’ said the SRSG Soren Jessen-Petersen.

The actual handover of competencies in police and justice matters will likely come during mediated discussions on the final status of the province.

Today, Kosovo a part of Serbia, is administered by the United Nations.

The European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana’s, visit to Pristina grabbed the headlines as he came, saw, and critizised the slowdown in the implementation of the standards.

‘I have been really surprised to see what is to my mind a slowdown of the process. I think that is a mistake’, said Solana and urged Kosovo leaders to do exactly the opposite and move faster.

‘You have to prove that you want to move in the right direction’, Solana said.

‘You are going to be watched and analyzed’, he added, referring to the international community.

Mr Solana paid special attention to the process of decentralization and proposed that more should be done to move forward on this standard.

Earlier, during a visit to Belgrade, Solana raised the hope of Serbia and Montenegro’s European future. He said that talks on the State Union’s stabilization and association agreement with the EU could begin in October.

Solana’s short but intensive visit in Kosovo will be followed by another in the end of August or beginning of September.

President Rugova, the leaders of the four main political parties, and UNMIK chief Soren Jessen-Petersen met for the third session of the Kosovo Forum on Thursday.

Following the discussions, the SRSG said that the Forum had identified the main issues to be addressed in preparing for status talks.

‘Over the next two weeks the secretariat will identify the experts to lead those status preparation discussions,’ he said.

Five working groups will be establishe, including one for the issue of missing persons.

In the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, the parliament has adopted a law on the use of flags.

From now on, the majority ethnic group in any given municipality can fly their own flag next to the official Macedonian one in front of local Government buildings.

The law on flags for ethnic communities is part of the implementation of the accord that ended Macedonia’s domestic conflict in 2001.

At the time, the ethnic conflict brought the country to the edge of civil war.

50 parliamentarians voted for the law on community flags, four voted against, while eight members abstained, the Macedonian Information Agency reported.

And finally from the world of the United Nations: UN peacekeepers are not trained well enough in the prevention of HIV/Aids – they don’t protect themselves, and they don’t protect the people where they are deployed.

The top UN AIDS official Peter Piot said this week that the Security Council should make training in HIV and AIDS issues an ‘explicit and timebound goal’ for peacekeepers in order to fight the pandemic.

Peter Piot, the chief on UNAIDS, spoke at an open council meeting discussing progress five years after it passed a landmark resolution on HIV/AIDS.

In the resolution the Security Council – for the first time – acknowledged AIDS as a threat to national security.

This was what we had chosen for this edition of the week in review, thank you for listening to UNMIK on air.

Always read the promta, before opening mouth

We will now play a silly little jingle, but we’ll be right back with more, so stay tuned and don’t go away. Really. You might get lost. Or worse.