Serbian judges refuse to obey rules of "state of Kosovo"
About 200 Serb judicial workers early on Friday blocked for an hour the District and Municipal Court in the northern part of Kosovska Mitrovica, warning that the two institutions would not work in keeping with the laws of the "state of Kosovo."
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Saturday, February 28, 2009
Judge Nikola Kabasic said that the Serb judicial employees held that EULEX could not operate there as some kind of an extended judicial institution of the "state of Kosovo," and that they knew that the mission's prosecutors and judges were using the seals of the "Republic of Kosovo" and its laws and that verdicts were being reached in the name of the "Republic of Kosovo."
Meanwhile, EULEX spokesman Christophe Lamfalussy said on Friday that the body was trying to resolve the issue of the seal which the judges and the prosecutors of that mission would use in Kosovo in the future.
Asked whether EULEX was still status neutral if their representatives put the stamp of the ''Republic of Kosovo" on the judicial documents they signed, Lamfalussy told the Mitrovica-based Kontakt Plus Radio that that represented a problem for them.
"This is a problem for us, because, as you know, the officials in the Serb part of Mitrovica do not feel happy about this, and we are trying to find a solution to that issue and hope that the matter will be resolved", he said.
"We are trying to take a pragmatic approach, and we know that this has caused concern in the Serb part of Mitrovca, and we are trying to find a solution", the EULEX spokesperson underlined.
He added that the EULEX Mission in Kosovo wanted to resolve the matter in a technical manner which would make it possible for everyone to go forward and to feel content with the functioning of the judicial system.
