Kosovo's top leaders and the UN mission chief agreed on Thursday
that parliamentary and local elections in Kosovo would be held in
November as envisaged by the law, said reports reaching Belgrade
from Kosovo.
Joachim Ruecker, head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK),
reached the agreement with the Kosovo Albanian negotiating team
headed by Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu, but the exact date would
be set at a later time, the Serbian national news agency reported
from the Kosovo capital Pristina.
Ruecker and the team said that the two processes of defining
status and elections would be underway at the same time, but that
priority would be given to resolving the future status of the
province.
The Kosovo negotiating team, made up of the province's top
leaders, was created to negotiate with Serbia on whether Kosovo
should be allowed to formally go its own way.
Kosovo, which legally remains a Serbian province, has been under
UN administration since 1999 under the UN Security Council
Resolution 1244.
Following 13-month fruitless talks between Serbia and Kosovo, UN
envoy Martti Ahtisaari presented in March a proposal recommending
internationally supervised independence for Kosovo. The proposal
received strong support from the United States, most EU countries
as well as Kosovo's authorities, but was rejected by Serbia and its
traditional ally Russia.
Last Friday, the United States and five EU member states, faced
with the threat of a veto by Russia, decided to give up their
attempts to resolve the status of Kosovo in the UN Security Council
and to transfer the process to the so-called Contact Group composed
of the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and
Russia.
Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu said that there would be no
administration vacuum in Kosovo until the elections and that they
would not delay the status process.
The Kosovo parliament's term expires in November, while local
elections should have been held last year. However, the then UNMIK
chief, Soren Jessen-Petersen, decided to postpone the vote, saying
that it would have an adverse effect on the process of defining the
province's status.
The decision on the election dates will be made by Ruecker, as
envisaged by Kosovo's constitutional framework.
(Xinhua News Agency July 27, 2007)
