Kosovo premier
delivers ultimatum to UN
Financial Times - April
19, 2004
LONDON -- Monday – Kosovo’s prime minister said today
that Serbia’s southern province will seek to secede in September 2005 if the
United Nations has not made substantial progress on the province's future by
then.
"If we wait until September 2005 and we see they are buying time,
probably we will unilaterally move for a referendum on independence or a
declaration of independence," Bajram Rexhepi said in an interview with Britain’s
the Financial Times.
Rexhepi said he would prefer to see a gradual
transition to self-rule agreed with the UN, but warned that
the international community was showing signs that it was unwilling to make
progress.
He accused some UN officials in the province of wanting the
status quo to continue for another five or ten years
The prime
minister’s remarks underline the renewed sense of urgency over Kosovo since last
month’s riots which left 19 people dead and more than nine hundred injured.
NATO’s occupying force of almost 20,000 troops failed to stop ethnic
Albanian mobs from attacking ethnic Serb enclaves. Thousands of Serbs were
forced to flee homes and churches that came under attack.
The
violence triggered reprisals against mosques in Serbia proper and has led some
observers to question whether negotiations over Kosovo's final status can begin
successfully next year.
Serbia's government also has broken the
diplomatic silence over Kosovo’s future, publishing a scheme that proposes
self-rule for ethnic minority communities in an autonomous Kosovo.
Copyright 2004 Financial Times
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