UN: No Administrative Partition of Kosovo

Pristina – The UN Mission in Kosovo has denied reports that the mission’s envoy for talks with Belgrade, Andrew Landley, proposed the administrative partition of Kosovo.

“The United Nations envoy cannot propose anything. He only follows the document and it depends on whether Pristina and Belgrade agree to it or not,” the UN Mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, spokesman Alexander Ivanko told Serbian media.

According to him, UNMIK only consults with Belgrade on moving dialogue ahead but “we are not participants in the dialogue.”

Since October 15, Landley has been mediating ‘dialogue’ between Pristina and Belgrade on issues of mutual interest.

In June this year, the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon instructed UNMIK chief Lamberto Zannier to start complicated talks with Belgrade on “several issues of mutual interest”, including Serbs involvement in Kosovo’s judiciary, police, customs, transportation and infrastructure, boundaries and Serbian patrimony.

Serbs argue that both the European Union’s new incoming law-and-order mission, EULEX and the United Nations mission’s ‘reconfiguration’ (the term used to describe the UN’s preparations to leave Kosovo and make way for EULEX) contravenes international law since under the UN Security Council Resolution 1244, passed in 1999 at the end of the conflict between Serb forces and Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority, only the UN can administer Kosovo on Serbia’s behalf.

The UN has administered Kosovo since 1999.

Pristina media reported last week that Landley had proposed the administrative partition of Kosovo with a ‘softly, softly’ approach to be taken by EULEX in the Serb-dominated north.
This drew a lot of condemnation in Pristina.