Albanians from south to submit "nine demands"

Source: B92

BELGRADE -- Coordination Body for Southern Serbia Chairman Zoran Stanković will on Monday in Bujanovac met with political representatives of ethnic Albanians.

Zoran Stanković (Tanjug, file)

The meeting will be held in the local office of the OSCE mission in this southern Serbian town.
B92 learned that today's agreement will be significant because it is expected to reduce the tension in this part of Serbia, and to establish a mutually acceptable level of tolerance among political representatives of the ethnic Albanian community and the Serbian state institutions.

Although the meeting and everything related to it was prepared suddenly, far from the public eye, the information obtained by B92 says that this initiative came from Stanković, who, since his appointment in November, established "a partial dialogue" with local Albanian leaders.

Today those leaders are expected to submit their list of "contentious issues" to the authorities. They will demand that the issues be solved "both by Serbia and representatives of the international community".

A source has told B92 that the lists refers to "collective rights and freedoms, language usage, national symbols, the return of refugees, integration of Albanians in public institutions, all the way to the poor economic situation in southern Serbia".