OSCE Chairman urges Kosovo leaders to begin decentralization process, continue standards implementation

PRISTINA/MITROVICA, 16 February 2006 - During a one-day visit to Kosovo today, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht, told political leaders in Pristina the implementation of standards and the start of a decentralization process needed to go alongside the currently ongoing status talks.

"The idea of 'status first, standards later' is wrong," the Chairman-in-Office (CiO) said after a meeting with the newly-elected President, Fatmir Sejdiu, who heads Kosovo's Provisional Institutions of Self-Government.

"Alongside the status issue we also have to come to grips with the standards discussion and the decentralization process. The OSCE stands ready to assist Kosovo in the long term in implementing these tasks, and to help the development of a democratic and pluralistic society."

At a meeting with Nexhat Daci, President of the Assembly of Kosovo and its Presidency, the CiO announced that the OSCE Mission in Kosovo was well positioned to focus on monitoring the development of local democratic structures on the ground through its network of field offices.

The CiO encouraged the Assembly to move ahead with plans to hold more frequent plenary meetings and to intensify efforts to implement a law on information allowing the Kosovo public access to the Assembly's documents.

He also appealed to the Assembly to do more to reach out to minority communities and to make more efforts to include them in its work.

During his visit to Kosovo, which is part of a three-day trip to Podgorica, Pristina and Belgrade, the CiO visited an area of minority returns, met a contingent of Belgian peace-keepers and toured the northern town of Mitrovica, which was a flash-point of violence in March 2004.

In talks with leaders of the Kosovo Serb community in northern Mitrovica, Minister De Gucht emphasized the importance of a negotiated solution of the status question.

"However, I don't see the role of the OSCE as a promoter of this or that formula in the status talks," he said. "Our task in Kosovo is to implement standards, but of course these can only be implemented if the conditions on the ground are conducive to it."

The Chairman-in-Office concluded his visit to Kosovo with talks with the Deputy Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General, Larry Rossin.