UNSC session on Kosovo on June 14

A session of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), which will present a report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the situation in Kosovo, will be held in New York on June 14, The press has learned.

(kosovocompromisestuff) Wednesday, June 05, 2013

The session has been scheduled by the Great Britain, which is chairing the Security Council this month. In his three-month report, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomes the agreement between Belgrade and Pristina, calling it a historic achievement, adding that the agreement provides considerable competences to the association/community of Serb municipalities. Ban urges both sides to maintain open channels of communication and make efforts to implement the agreement. He also commends the political leadership in Belgrade and Pristina, as well as the EU for the role it played in the dialogue. The same spirit of determination, compromise and good will should guide the implementation of the agreement. The international community should give its active and full support to the parties in this regard, writes Ban. In the report, he criticizes unsolved crimes in Kosovo, noting they remain of concern. Ban also comments on the investigation into organ trafficking handled by the Special Investigative Task Force, noting that the team continued to consolidate and analyze information obtained from institutional sources. The UN secretary-general also commends Serbia's War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic, while justifying the international prosecutors who do not discuss publicly any of their findings saying that their investigation is “very intricate.” Ban says the lead prosecutor of the Special Investigative Task Force Clint Williamson traveled to London, Berlin, Paris and Madrid to talk about the need to further strengthen the Task Force's capabilities and to discuss how these countries can further support its work. In the section related to the security situation in Kosovo, the UN head says it remained generally calm during the past three months, with occasional tensions in ethnically-mixed areas, as well as in northern Mitrovica. There were five serious incidents of shootings and explosions in northern Kosovo, adds the report. Throughout Kosovo, the most common incidents affecting minority communities continued to be thefts, property damage, illegal occupation of houses, arson of uninhabited houses, and minor assaults. The Kosovo police continue to undertake efforts to investigate these incidents, according to the report. A total of 1,754 individuals remain missing and on April 9, EULEX exhumed the remains of seven presumed missing persons in the Muslim cemetery of northern Mitrovica.