UNMIK/PR/1242
PRISTINA – SRSG Søren Jessen-Petersen and KFOR Commander Gen. Yves de Kermabon visited two villages in Klina today to take a first-hand look at the living conditions for Serbs who have returned there.
After speaking to people from Bica village and neighbouring Grabac as well as displaced Kosovo Serbs from Klina town, the SRSG expressed dissatisfaction at the situation in Bica, where Kosovo Serb villagers are protected by barbed wire barricades and a 24-hour presence of peacekeeping troops. The SRSG pledged his support to work with the local community and municipal authorities to find more sustainable solutions for all the people he met.
“In Kosovo in October 2004, a Kosovo that is determined to move towards review of standards and status talks, there should and must be no places where people are forced to live behind barbed wires and protected by KFOR,” the SRSG stressed.
However, the situation for the first group of returnees in Vidanje village is much better, Mr. Jessen-Petersen observed. “On the other hand what I have seen here in Vidanje right now is the way forward for Kosovo,” he said. “The municipal authorities are and will be providing all the necessary facilities that will allow the returnees and the community to integrate.”
In the first phase of a project funded by the Kosovo Government and implemented by the Danish Refugee Council, 33 Serbs have returned to Vidanje to begin reconstructing their homes before bringing the rest of their family members back to the village. The budget of the project is €970,000, and includes the reconstruction of 25 homes, repairing infrastructure like the village’s water supply, and also providing assistance to needy families in the receiving community.
KFOR Commander de Kermabon said that since the beginning of his mission in Kosovo, his motto is “restore confidence.” “Here in Vidanje I saw that the confidence is here, and it is a great pleasure for me,” he said. While he noted that this confidence is lacking in Bica, he pledged that KFOR would work hard together with UNMIK and the local representatives to restore trust between the people.
“The future of Kosovo is in this confidence, confidence between the inhabitants and confidence between the two ethnicities,” Gen. de Kermabon said.
At the end of their trip, the SRSG and COMKFOR went to visit Zociste monastery in Rahovec/Orahovac municipality, where they met with Serbian Orthodox Church representatives and municipal authorities to discuss reconstruction of the monastery, which was destroyed in late 1999.