SERBIA: UN Envoy Martti Ahtisaari visits northern Kosovo to meet with Serbian representatives.

Martti Ahtisaari, the UN special envoy for Kosovo and a former Finnish president, visited north Kosovo and met with representatives of the Serb municipalities on Thursday(August 24, 2006). The visit is part of a three-day round of negotiations on the future status of the UN protectorate. On Thursday he met with representatives of north Kosovo municipalities, Kosovo President Fatmir Sejdiu and Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku, and held a meeting with the Kosovo negotiating team. Speaking to the media, Ahtisaari gave little information away, as to the progress of talks. "I may be able to say that we have made some progress, without going into details, because this process continues. And bare with me because there comes a day when I'm in a position to say where we actually are in the end of that process." Mayor of the town of Zvecan, Dragan Mijovic, said he and other Serbian mayors had been able to discuss some of their concerns. "We have talked about other subjects too, like about our concern on some statements made by Mr. Ceku (Kosovo Prime Minister, Agim Ceku) on creating a Kosovo army," Mijovic said. "We have a different opinion. We think that Kosovo should be demilitarised. There is KFOR here and we have good cooperation with them, so demilitarise Kosovo and don't create new armies in Kosovo," he added. While in Kosovo, Ahtisaari is to meet with Joachim Rucker, the head of the local UN administration as well as representatives of the province's Serbs. Kosovo's Albanians have demanded full independence for the province, but Serbia is unwilling to agree. Little progress has been made in bringing the positions of the two negotiating sides closer. While ethnic Albanians insist on full independence for Kosovo, Serbia equally insists on not losing its territory and offers wide autonomy instead. The United Nations took control of Kosovo in 1999 when Serb forces were driven out by 78 days of NATO bombing aimed at halting their two-year counter-insurgency war against Albanian guerrillas in which some 10,000 civilians were killed.

ITN Source | August 26, 2006

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