[ALBSA-Info] NATO urges Serbia to encourage voters in Kosovo

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

NATO urges Serbia to encourage voters in Kosovo

  
BRUSSELS, July 18 (Reuters) - Serbs in enclaves of Albanian-dominated Kosovo 
must be encouraged to take part in the general election due in four months if 
multi-ethnic democracy is to be established there, NATO said on Wednesday. 

Alliance Secretary-General George Robertson said getting out the Serb vote, 
and organising the safe return of Serbs who fled Kosovo as Yugoslav forces 
left two years ago to make way for NATO peacekeepers, were key objectives in 
building a stable society. 

He was speaking at NATO headquarters after talks with Serbian Deputy Prime 
Minister Nebojsa Covic and Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic, which 
he described as "constructive and highly professional." 

The U.N.-administered election for a legislative assembly is due in November. 

"We do not want to be part of the problem any more," Covic told reporters. 
"We want to participate constructively." 

Covic said Serbia was interested in playing a role not only in the northern 
Serb enclave of Mitrovica but in the southern and western districts of 
Prizren and Pec, abandoned by almost all Serbs in the chaos of mid-June 1999. 

He denied suggestions Belgrade was proposing the partition of Kosovo, and 
acknowledged the time was not right for the return of a limited number of 
Serbian security personnel, as foreseen in U.N. Resolution 1244 on Kosovo. 

Robertson said that move was "not for the moment," but added they were 
working hard on the return of displaced people. 

Covic said: "We obviously wish that the armed forces and the police go back 
there. But desire is one thing and reality something else." 

He was referring to the opposition any such move would be likely to meet from 
the ethnic Albanian majority. 

Covic also mentioned the need to trace Serbs still missing and unaccounted 
for in Kosovo. Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic has suggested he could 
meet Kosovo Albanian leaders Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku to discuss this 
issue. 

About 180,000 Serbs fled Kosovo after NATO-led troops took control of the 
province following three months of air strikes in 1999 to halt Belgrade's 
repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. 

Some 100,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, many of them living in enclaves heavily 
guarded by the NATO-led peacekeeping force. 

But both Thaci and Ceku issued statements on Wednesday saying the time was 
not yet right for talks with Djindjic and describing the Serbian premier's 
initiative as an attempt to distract from atrocities by Serbs against ethnic 
Albanians. 

"Neither Djindjic nor his government have yet given any responses concerning 
the fate of thousands of missing Albanians and hundreds of others who 
continue to be held in Serbian jails," Ceku said. 

Covic said he wanted to "make a showcase" of the Presevo Valley region of 
southern Serbia, where 6,500 out of 12,000 local Albanians were back in their 
homes following peaceful disbandment of an Albanian rebel force this year, 
organised in cooperation with NATO.