Office for Kosovo and Metohija
Government of the Republic of Serbia

Kosovo will not get a seat in the UN

It is no secret that Serbia and America have different perspectives on the status of Kosovo. We are fighting to uphold the principles of international law. Serbia holds that in the world today, the voice of all countries, at least in the United Nations, should carry equal weight, says the Director of the Office of the Government of Serbia for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Đurić.

The year 2015 was full of temptations for our people in Kosovo and Metohija, yet another year in which our people have endeavored, with difficulties, to endure on the land which Serbs have called their homeland and which is the cradle of Serbian statehood. This is how Marko Đurić describes the previous year.

What is the quality and quantity of Serbia’s work on the issue of Kosovo and Metohija?

- We prevented the snatching of "Trepča". With our friends from around the world we were able to prevent Kosovo from becoming a member of UNESCO. We won a multitude of such victories. One of them is the Agreement on the Principles for the Establishment of the Community of Serbian Municipalities closed with Priština on 25 August 2015. It remains our achievement despite the fierce resistance and obstruction from Priština in the implementation of some parts of these agreements. There is no doubt that given such difficult legacy, we have a serious struggle ahead of us to ensure that the promises made have been upheld and signatures have been implemented.

The Community of Serbian Municipalities (CSM) has not been established yet, despite the fact that it is of crucial importance for the Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija. The Constitutional Court of Kosovo ruled that the establishment of the CSM is incompatible with their Constitution, but there are no references to August 25 when the document was signed. What does it mean?

- The Opinion of the Constitutional Court in Priština is of no concern to us. We have not made an agreement with them, but with the legitimately elected representatives of the Albanians. Just as we had not been asked for our opinion when they adopted their constitution, and that fact that no one considered the principles of international law and the Constitution of Serbia in 2008 when the illegal decision on the secession of Kosovo was made, which we do not and shell not recognize, so we believe that political agreement should be implemented and applied, without looking for any excuses to bypass its implementation.

It was announced, if I am not mistaken, that negotiations between Belgrade and Priština in Brussels will be resumed as early as in January 2016 - what lies ahead of us in this session?

- January will be a month of negotiations. In the second week of January a delegation from the European Union will come to Belgrade, in order to prepare the ground for the resumption of talks between Belgrade and Priština, specifically to look at the current situation in the light of the failure of Priština to implement the agreements. Around 18 January, talks will be resumed on the expert, technical level in order to unlock the implementation of the agreements to which Priština committed. This process should have as an epilogue the meeting between the Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić and representatives of provincial institutions. Our objective in these negotiations is to consolidate the rights and stability for our citizens and ensure the exercise of their property rights. We have nearly 80,000 people whose houses and apartments remain usurped to date. Around 43,000 such claims were submitted to provincial institutions and have been dismissed. It must be a topic in these negotiations, as must be the issue of public and state property. Total area of Kosovo and Metohija is about one million and 84 thousand hectares, and over one half of it is owned by Serbia, through various companies.

What about the property of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC)? How do you comment on the part of the Platform for Kosovo proposed by the President of Serbia, according to which the SOC in Kosovo should be established according to the model of the Vatican?

- If the Ahtisaari Plan, which Belgrade has never agreed to, and its Annex 5 provides for a high degree of the SOC autonomy in their operation, protected areas, maintenance and reconstruction of monasteries and churches, why not guarantee the same before the international community and, in this case, the EU mediators, within the framework of normalization and improvement of relations? Both the Prime Minister and the President of Serbia regard Kosovo-Metohija as a matter of great importance, meaning that all elements of state policy implemented by the government are under careful scrutiny and consideration. Consultations on the implementation of the state policy are happening round-the-clock.

The Agency for Cadastre, which will review our land books that we gave them, is to open in Priština. More specifically, it is said that the ownership of the land, which is Serbian, but usurped by the Albanians, will be determined on the basis of criteria which they are establishing, and not on the basis of existing records.

- The Agreement on Cadastre was reached in 2011, and it's not bad. It allows for Belgrade, Priština and the EU to form a tripartite agency that would carry out the verification of assets, and to certain extent, also a review and analysis over the operation of the provincial Judiciary in this field. But we have a different problem here, and that is Priština ignoring this agreement, and trying to not only establish their own agency but start issuing rescripts of their own, based on the cadastral records which they currently do not hold and will not get if they continue to behave in such a manner. We will not give them our land registry until we're convinced that the rights of our citizens will be protected.

Is the UN seat for Priština one of the issues that will be imposed on us in the upcoming period? The US Ambassador to Belgrade already implied something to this effect?

- It's no secret that Serbia and America take a differet view on the status of Kosovo and Metohija. We do not want to change our position, because we have our own national interests in Kosovo and Metohija, and we are fighting to uphold the principles of the international law. Serbia holds that in the world today, the voice of all countries, at least in the United Nations, should carry equal weight. As to the decision-making mechanism in the UN, a country cannot become a full member without the consent of the permanent members of the Security Council. Serbia can count on a steady support of the influential states in the Security Council, primarily the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China.

Is it realistic for Serbia to close the Chapter 35 and not recognize Kosovo? Will Kosovo still be presented with an asterisk afterwards?

- That chapter, with all the elements inserted into it, is anything but easy, but the more tempted we are, the more we will have to work on ourselves. We'll have to try harder to consolidate ourselves, our system and our national body. What we know is that we cannot, do not want to and, ultimately, will not give up Kosovo and Metohija. The way in which the contents of that chapter will be defined largely depends on the future of our relations with the EU member states. It is important for us to energize our diplomatic activity and win over to our point of view both the large and small states.