The week in review 1 - 6 October 2005

Hello and welcome to the Week in Review with news about Kosovo as reported in the local and international press. Here are the headlines:

· Teachers and health care workers in Kosovo go on strike

· on Kosovo and says status talks are likely to start soon

· And Croatia has started membership negotiations with the EU Solana says the EU should take over security duties after UNMIK

· Kosovo's Post and Telecom signs partnership with British Telecom

· Kofi Annan receives report

More than 30,000 Kosovo teachers and health care workers began a general strike Monday demanding that the government raise their wages and social benefits, Agence France Presse wrote.

Most of elementary and middle school teachers as well as health care workers continued striking through Thursday.

However, emergency services kept running during the week.

"The strike can be cancelled only if the government fulfils the strikers' demands with a decree," said Aslan Bajrami, head of the strike council.

By the end of the week, the Government had not come up with an offer that could end the strike.

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The European Union's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said Wednesday that the EU should eventually take control of law enforcement in Kosovo, the Associated Press wrote.

The move should follow the EU’s takeover of security duties from NATO in Bosnia last year.

Javier Solana told the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee that after the EU takeover in Bosnia, ``something very similar will have to take place in our relations with Kosovo.''

Earlier this month, UN authorities in Kosovo handed over command of police in Pristina, the province's capital, to the local force.

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Tuesday, Kosovo's Post and Telecom signed a partnership deal with British Telecom, the Associated Press wrote.

Under the deal, the British company and Post and Telecom, known as PTK, will work jointly for a period of three months on drafting a strategic roadmap, said a spokesman for the Kosovo company.

PTK is Kosovo's most profitable company. It recently signed a 17 million euro deal with the French telecommunications company Alcatel to modernize and expand the fixed-line network in the province.

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UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Wednesday that he was likely to recommend the launch of final status talks for Kosovo after receiving a report Tuesday from his special envoy Ambassador Kai Eide.

‘I am likely to indicate that we proceed with status talks’, Annan said to news agency AFP.

The Security Council is now expected to take up the issue in the second half of this month.

Ambassador Eide has had extensive consultations in Serbia and Kosovo, as well as with key member states and regional organizations.

His report focuses on progress made in implementing democratic standards in Kosovo.

Meanwhile, Contact Group member Russia said that Belgrade’s position before the status talks, which is ‘more than autonomy, less than independence’ for Kosovo, is a clear formula and close to the Russian position.

The Russian foreign minister’s special envoy for the Balkans, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko, said that Belgrade’s formula is an indicator of quote “Serbia’s constructive approach” to the issue, Itas-Tass reported.

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The European Union has opened membership negotiations with Croatia this week, after the UN's war crimes prosecutor said the country was cooperating fully in seeking a key fugitive suspect, news agencies reported.

Croatia was originally due to have started the EU talks in March, but they were delayed because of lack of cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in hunting down fugitive general Ante Gotovina.

Gotovina has been indicted by the UN tribunal for war crimes against ethnic Serbs at the end of the Serbo-Croatian war.

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Those were some of the headlines in Kosovo this week, thank you for listening. Goodbye.