Meeting to discuss Feith's mandate

The political directors of the foreign ministries of 25 member-states of the group will be meeting in Austria today to talk behind closed doors about the extension of Feith's mandate.

It is expected that Feith's authorities, which were increased in the fields from the Ahtisaari plan, could be scaled down, with the goal of gradually handing over these responsibilities from the plan to the Kosovo government in Priština.

The ISG named Feith as the ICO chief in the southern Serbian province on February 28, 2008.

He is in charge of overlooking the implementation of the Ahtisaari plan on Kosovo's supervised independence, and can intervene and "remove the moves" that he believes go against the plan.

The Ahtisaari plan, which was not approved by the UN Security Council and is not accepted by Serbia, calls for the ISG to discuss the authorities of the ICO chief two years after the plan takes effect, with the goal of gradually decreasing the ICO chief's authorities and frequency of interventions.

In the meantime, Feith has appointed 14 members of the "Municipal Preparatory Team for the new municipality of North Mitrovica". This team has a technical mandate to prepare resources, funds and administrative structures necessary for the future establishment and functioning of the new municipality.

One representative of the Kosovo Albanian government's Ministry of Local Government Administration, of the "mother municipality" and of the ICO will join the appointed members of the team, the announcement also said.

Regarding the appointment of the members of the preparatory team, Feith stated that "the team would lay a cornerstone for a new, positive future of their community".

"They will work on preparing the new municipality whose biggest priority will be to serve the citizens. They will have the ICO's full cooperation in this work," said he.