Byzantine Blog

Tadic: UN Security Council Remains Essential to Serbia and its Kosovo Province

According to Tanjug, Serbian President Boris Tadic said on Monday that any international conference on Kosovo and Metohija province is acceptable only if it takes place under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council.

“The entire process began in the Security Council and it must end in the UN Security Council,” Tadic said, commenting a statement by the European Union representative in the mediating troika of the Contact Group, Wolfgang Ischinger, about the possibility of holding a Dayton-style European conference on Serbian Kosovo province.

During a tour of the Ground Safety Zone in southern Serbia, Tadic said the negotiating process can be considered legally valid and in keeping with international law only if it is taking place under the umbrella of the UN Security Council.

Commenting a recent statement by one of the Kosovo Albanian separatist leaders, Fatmir Sejdiu, who said that ethnic Albanians must be calm “until December 10”, Tadic warned this was a direct threat.

Calling upon the international officials to condemn such statements, President Tadic said:

“Everyone must be calm both before and after December 10. That is how Serbia and its negotiating team are behaving, and that is how the other side must behave as well.”

Serbia Rejects Any Possibility of Taking the Issue of Kosovo Province Outside the UN Framework

Serbian state negotiating team for the future status of Kosovo and Metohija province is not considering holding a “European conference” on Serbia’s province, Minister for Kosovo-Metohija Slobodan Samardzic said on Monday, stressing that the negotiating process falls strictly under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council, not EU or any other group of countries or organization.

“Serbia is not considering an international conference at all. Kosovo and Metohija is discussed within a process of negotiations that is strictly under the UN auspices, under the control of the Security Council, and it is being implemented operatively by the Contact Group and the troika in the negotiations. And that is the framework and the format that will be upheld, as far as we are concerned, until the question of Kosovo and Metohija is resolved,” Samardzic said in a statement for Tanjug.

“That framework and format guarantees that the United Natioins will be continuously involved in the process of resolving this issue. It also guarantees that Kosovo province issue will be resolved within the Resolution 1244. No special international conference could resolve the question of Kosovo and Metohija,” Samardzic said, reacting to the EU speculations about the European conference on the status of southern Serbian province.

“Serbia rejects every attempt to take Kosovo-Metohija question outside the UN framework. That is out of the question and we absolutely reject any such suggestions.”

Cartoon by Toso Borkovic (Serbia)