Pristina and Belgrade still deadlocked on cultural heritage protection

24/07/2006

Another round of negotiation talks ended last week without a breakthrough. The focus was on cultural heritage and the decentralisation process.

By Blerta Foniqi for Southeast European Times in Pristina – 24/07/06

The Kosovo delegation holds a press conference in Pristina on Thursday (20 July). [Laura Hasani]

The negotiating teams representing Serbia and Kosovo met last week in Vienna for a seventh round of status talks. The two-day meeting focused on the protection of religious and cultural heritage in Kosovo, and on the decentralisation process.

The two sides remain deadlocked on a number of issues, including Serbia's calls for protection zones around 39 Orthodox monasteries, churches and other sites. "We will sit with the experts to work on a compromise," UN-appointed mediator Petr Ivantsov said.

"The zones differ, the proposals differ, they differ both from what UNOSEK and what the international experts suggested and of course they were different between themselves," Ivantsov said.

International experts have drawn up a set of proposals, following a visit to the province from 12-18 June, and these formed the basis for reports by the Council of Europe and UNESCO, with recommendations then sent to both delegations.

According to Ylber Hysa, the head of the ethnic Albanian delegation, "the Serbian side was not at all open" to compromise. Serbian negotiator Slobodan Samardzic, meanwhile, took a less critical tone. "We did not expect marvelous results ... this is a part of a process," he said.

According to Kosovo delegation head Lutfi Haziri, substantial differences also remain over the divided city of Mitrovica. Pristina is calling for a city with one municipal board, while the international community is eyeing two municipalities, he noted.

"The stumbling blocks lie for the Belgrade delegation in the areas of competencies, particularly the degree of municipal involvement in police and justice, curricula for the educational system and the structure of the Serbian language in the university," said UNOSEK Senior Advisor Bernhard Schlagheck. For Pristina, they lie in "the question of asymmetric decentralisation, namely whether additional competencies should be given to Kosovo Serb majority municipalities", he said.

At the same time, said Schlagheck, "we somewhat closed the gap, identified major areas of concerns, and to some extent of disagreements, and we all developed a better understanding on where each party stands on that very complex issue," he said.