The international troika of US, EU and Russian mediators said on
Saturday that they had opened new talks on the future status of the
Serbian breakaway Kosovo province to seek consensus between Serbia
and ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo.
"The visits to Pristina and Belgrade mark the opening of a new
round of talks on the status of Kosovo," the US representative of
the troika Frank Wisner was quoted as saying by the Serbian
official Tanjug news agency.
"We have used the meetings (in Pristina) to hear the views of
the Kosovo president and their negotiating team which are important
and to whom we have explained our mission," Wisner told reporters
in Pristina, following talks with representatives of NATO-led
Kosovo peacekeepers, UN mission in Kosovo and the Kosovo
negotiating team.
The international troika of Wisner, EU envoy Wolfgang Ischinger
and Russian representative Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko met Serbian
President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica in
Belgrade on Friday, before heading to Kosovo on Saturday for talks
with top officials there.
The troika mediators, who are entrusted by the international
Contact Group of six major powers to lead new talks, are to report
back to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon by Dec. 10 on the progress
of the talks.
New talks were agreed after Russia's veto threat forced the West
to step back from a UN Security Council vote in July on a US-EU
draft resolution on Kosovo and try to resolve the issue in a fresh
round of talks over the next 120 days led by the Contact Group of
US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.
Kosovo, which legally remains a Serbian province, has been under
UN administration since 1999 under the UN Security Council
Resolution 1244. The predominantly Albanians of the 2 million
population demand outright independence instead of maximum autonomy
offered by Serbia.
Following UN-led 13-month fruitless talks between Serbia and
Kosovo, UN envoy on Kosovo talks 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.
"We are here as a troika to build bridges and to try to find
ways to reach a consensus. We will agree to everything that the
participants agree. We are not here to come out with suggestions,
rather to obtain a consensus with our ideas," Wisner said.
Russia's representative Botsan-Kharchenko said that the troika's
mission will be exceptionally difficult, but that it is very
important that both sides have pledged to cooperate.
The troika operates under the mandate of the UN secretary
general, meaning that the process of defining the status of Kosovo
remains within the UN Security Council, Botsan-Kharchenko said.
EU's envoy Ischinger said that the future of Kosovo is of the
greatest importance for all members of the European Union.
"We take seriously the process that was initiated in Belgrade
and which continues in Pristina. We appreciate the good will of the
Kosovo president and the Pristina negotiating team to work with us
and we are pleased that we received similar assurances in Belgrade
from their leaders. This is a good start for something that is not
an easy mission for the troika," Ischinger said.
Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu said he expects constructive and
serious talks, but reiterated that Pristina's position is that the
independence and territorial integrity of Kosovo is
non-negotiable.
Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku said before the meeting that he
would request the troika to have the issue of people who went
missing during the war in Kosovo be one of the main topics at
upcoming talks on Kosovo's status.
"We will not negotiate about independence. I am assuring you
that one of the first and main topics will be shedding light of the
fate of the missing," said Ceku.
On Sunday, the troika is scheduled to meet in Pristina with
representatives of the Kosovo Serbs who number only 130,000 of
Kosovo's nearly two million population.
(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2007)
