Kosovo police interrupt minister’s visit

13 January 2010 | 12:59 | Source: Tanjug

PRIŠTINA -- Kosovo police, KPS, have interrupted the visit of Minister for Kosovo Goran Bogdanović to the Serb enclave of Štrpce. The enclave in located in the south of the province. Police told the minister that he “cannot move in that area without the Kosovo government permission”. After he visited the village of Sevce on his way to Štrpce, Bogdanović and his team were stopped by a large number of KPS members, including those from a “special unit”, dubbed “Rosa”, said reports. According to the same reports, Bogdanović asked to see a written statement from the government in Priština prohibiting him movement. But a regional KPS commanders said that he had an oral order that Bogdanović “must leave Kosovo”. The armed members of KPS escorted the minister “toward northern Kosovo”, while it was unclear whether he would go to the administrative line checkpoint of Merdare or to the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica, which he insisted on, said Tanjug. Bogdanović commented on the incident by saying that it was an ill thought-through move by Kosovo’s temporary authorities, since he was a resident of Kosovo and “as such, regardless of the ministerial office, had a right to free movement in Kosovo”. “This is a demonstration that there is no freedom of movement in Kosovo and that local Serbs, residents of Kosovo, myself included, are being denied our basic human right,” said he. Bogdanović added that he “did not wish to create incidents”, and repeated that today’s events were “the best example of how Serbs live in Kosovo”.