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The Government of the Republic of Serbia

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Serbian team demands that Serbian police guard Orthodox churches, monasteries

Vienna, 28 February 2007

At today's talks in Vienna, the Serbian state team for negotiations on Kosovo-Metohija's future status demanded that Orthodox churches and monasteries of great importance in the province be safeguarded by specially trained forces of the Serbian police which would join the international military forces in the province.

Author: Fonet

Addressing the press at Vienna's Austria Centre, coordinator of the state team Leon Kojen said that during the first session UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari today for the first time began the discussion on the safety of Orthodox churches and monasteries in Kosovo-Metohija and stated in his proposal that the majority of such facilities should be guarded by the local police, and the remaining, lesser number by international military forces.

Belgrade rejected this proposal and demanded that at least churches and monasteries of the greatest importance be protected by international forces together with members of the Serbian police specially trained for protecting religious facilities, which is in line with UN SC Resolution 1244, said Kojen.

He added that this is not about Serbian military forces wanting to come back to the province, but rather about a vital and important issue that cannot be left to others to solve.

Coordinator of the Serbian state team Slobodan Samardzic stressed that the experience so far shows that the protection of religious facilities from June 1999 onwards has been disastrous.

He recalled that more than 150 monuments of culture and churches were razed to the ground, among which are a number of medieval monuments and Serbia is under obligation to react whenever the need arises.

President of the Coordinating Centre for Kosovo-Metohija Sanda Raskovic-Ivic said that the Belgrade delegation submitted an amendment to the scope and way of securing protected zones in the province.

Raskovic-Ivic said that UN Envoy Martti Ahtisaari proposed 45 protected zones in his package, but noted that Ahtisaari split many of the zones into several parts thus increasing their number.

According to her, few monasteries and churches in Kosovo-Metohija stay within the zones that Belgrade required, while most of the zones were reduced to 100 to 50 metres in diameter.

Member of the state team Dusan Batakovic said that despite certain progress in negotiations on procedural affairs concerning the economic part of the annex on protection of cultural and religious heritage, today there were rather unpleasant attempts to de-ethicise Serbian heritage in Kosovo-Metohija from the whole Serbian heritage.

We still agreed to discuss maps once again, to send them to UNOSEK and to make efforts in order to get closer to an agreement, Batakovic said.