Phone situation in Kosovo "improves"
Serbian Telecommunications Minister Jasna Matic said that the situation in Kosovo is "slowly improving". Serbian Assembly delegation in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly proposed declaration that should condemn the destruction of telecommunications in Kosovo, and ask the international community to enable the return of Serbian mobile phone providers and line connections.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Friday, April 30, 2010
Landline telephony has been reestablished in the town of Strpce in southern Kosovo, Matic said this Thursday.
"Telekom is hard at work on getting its network back up in the parts of Kosovo where lines were disconnected," Matic said.
She added that her ministry appealed to the International Telecommunication Union and UNMIK, "which has authority over telecommunications in Kosovo under UN Resolution 1244".
Member of the Serbian Assembly delegation Milos Aligrudic has stated in Strasbourg that the declaration, which has been proposed in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, should condemn the destruction of telecommunications in Kosovo, and ask the international community to enable the return of Serbian mobile phone providers and line connections.
Aligrudic has said that the draft of the declaration he submitted along with another member of the Serbian delegation Dragan Todorovic was signed by 40 representatives of all MP groups from 12 countries in the Parliamentary Assembly.
Among the signatories is former Assembly Speaker Louise Maria de Putch.
Two incidents occurred in northern Kosovo late on Wednesday, reports said.
The first attack targeted a transmitter of cell phone operator IPKO and the second the Zubin Potok police station.
Regional spokesman for the Kosovo Police Service Besim Hoti told Tanjug that an explosion, which occurred around midnight Wednesday, damaged the transmitter in the municipality of Leposavic.
Police determined that an explosive device was planted in the structure which houses the cell phone repeater and caused a fire when it detonated, Hoti said.
This is the third attack on the property of this cell phone operator in the last week.
Unidentified attackers threw a hand grenade into the yard of the Zubin Potok police station early on Thursday.
The explosion broke windows at the police station and damaged nearby dumpsters, Hoti said.
The Kosovo police, KPS, was treating both incidents as public endangerment and looking for the perpetrators, he said.
