By Fisnik Abrashi
Associated PressJune 17, 2001
Representatives of the 15 nations on the UN Security Council came to Kosovo on Saturday to examine the challenges confronting the ethnically tense UN-administered province and urge citizens to participate in elections this fall. After meeting with Hans Haekkerrup, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative in Kosovo, delegation leader Anwarul Chowdhury said the goal was to build a multiethnic society where everyone participates in the political process.
"We should not allow ourselves to be pulled back by our past," said Chowdhury, the Security Council chief. "We should be pushed ahead by the potential of the future."
First on the agenda was getting people registered and encouraging them to participate in the Nov. 17 general elections, U.N. officials said. Minority Serbs in Kosovo - a mostly ethnic Albanian province of Serbia, the larger of the two republics that now make up Yugoslavia - boycotted local elections last October.
Jeremy Greenstock, the British ambassador to United Nations, urged the Serb community to prove they were interested in the process by registering candidates. Chowdury said other problems, such as detainees and missing people, would be discussed with Yugoslav officials in Belgrade on Monday. About 250 ethnic Albanians are still in prisons in Serbia, while several thousand ethnic Albanians and Serbs are still listed as missing as a result of the war in 1999.
The Security Council will also be looking at the impact the conflict in neighboring Macedonia is having on Kosovo, UN officials said. The mission is the first to include representatives Security Council nations. A smaller mission visited Kosovo in April 2000.
On Sunday, delegation members travel to the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica to meet local ethnic Albanian and Serb leaders, and hold talks with the NATO-led force. They then head to Belgrade on Monday to meet with Yugoslav President Vojislav Kustunica, before returning to New York to brief the Security Council on Tuesday.
The United Nations has been administering Kosovo since a 78-day NATO bombing campaign forced Yugoslav troops to withdraw from the province in June 1999, ending then-President Slobodan Milosevic's attacks against ethnic Albanians.
