UNMIK/PR/1511
PRISTINA – The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Kosovo (SRSG) Søren Jessen-Petersen today met Serbian President Boris Tadic in Belgrade. The Serbian Prime Minister’s adviser Dr. Slobodan Samardzic participated in the meeting. The SRSG also held separate meetings with Ambassador Radomir Diklic, Adviser to the President of Serbia and Montenegro, Ambassadors of Contact Group countries in Belgrade and the Heads of UN Agencies.
Addressing a press conference in Belgrade this afternoon, the SRSG welcomed the start of the status process. He said, “The status process has already had an impact on the ground. The Kosovo Albanian majority know what they want, but they also understand clearly that they have to earn the right to realize their goal.”
The SRSG noted the particular concerns of the Kosovo Serb community on the launch of the status process: “The Kosovo Serbs are worried about what this might mean,” he said, “That makes it extremely important that the Kosovo Albanian majority, the leadership, understands that the way for them to earn what they want, must pass through a significantly improved situation for the minorities in general and the Kosovo Serbs in particular.”
“The current majority, which was minority until seven years ago, saw at the time how the majority then, who failed to govern Kosovo on the behalf of all communities, in 1999, lost the right to govern Kosovo. It is therefore extremely important that the current majority, the Kosovo Albanians, understand that you can lose the right to govern a place if you do not govern on behalf of all communities. That is, I am confident, understood by the provisional institutions of Kosovo,” the SRSG said.
