UN Security Council to meet for session on Kosovo
Source: b92

BELGRADE -- The UN Security Council will meet today in New York for a session where the regular, three-month report of the UN mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, will be presented.

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremić will be present at the meeting.

In his new report Tanjug had access to, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon cautioned about tensions and risks threatening to hamper stability in Kosovo, and said that there will be not be much room for the dialogue between Belgrade and Priština in the coming months.

The reports states that the number of criminal acts directed against ethnic minorities in Kosovo has increased in the period February-May 2012, that is when compared to the same period last year.

The UN secretary general also cautioned that the number of returnees has reduced in the same period, and that only 136 people returned to Kosovo in the past three months. The returnees include 33 Serbs, 10 Roma people, 83 Ashkalis, eight Bosniaks and two Albanians. This is 48 percent less than in the same period 2011, when 264 persons came back to Kosovo.

Tensions and confrontations pose a great risk to stability in Kosovo and the entire region, and there is still considerable resistance of Kosovo Albanians to legal measures protecting Serbian cultural and religious heritage in Kosovo, the report says.

At the previous session which was held on February 8, ambassadors of the UN Security Council member states called for the continuation of dialogue between Belgrade and Priština and for finding a decision about representation of Kosovo in regional forums, which was accomplished later in March.

One of the main topics of the February session was the investigation into organ trafficking in Kosovo, following reports by CoE Special Rapporteur Dick Marty, but the UN Security Council member states then put forward different views of whether an investigation should be carried out by EULEX, as advocated by the U.S. and other NATO members, or by the UN, as advocated by Russia and China.

Almost a year and a half ago, EULEX began an investigation into the trafficking of human organs, but has not yet released any data on how the investigation is progressing and whether indictments for those crimes might be expected soon.