At
UN,
As Serbia Complains of Telecom Cut in Kosovo, Few Are Listening
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
November 12 -- While the UN's
reports on Kosovo and the
resulting public Security Council sessions, 18 speeches and out, have
become routinized, there are still interesting factoids which
emerge.
In the meeting of November 12, Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic
complained that in late September
“armed
teams of ethnic Albanians brought down Serbia Telecom's mobile and
fixed telephony network in South Kosovo... immediately affect[ing]
approximately 100,000 South Kosovo Serbs, disrupting their ability to
communicate beyond their enclaves - a serious breach of contemporary
humanitarian norms... with hospital officials in Gracanica ascribing
several fatalities to the inability of patients to call for help.”
When
the meeting
was over, Inner City Press asked Jeremic to go to the stakeout area
on camera and take questions on this and other matters. He declined,
indicating that the session was routine.
When
another
journalist asked him to respond to the charge by US Deputy Permanent
Representative Rosemany DiCarlo that Serbia is calling for boycotting
elections in Kosovo, he quipped, how can one call for a boycott of a
country which doesn't exist?
DiCarlo,
on the
other hand, said that 71 countries have now recognized Kosovo, and
that its sovereignty and borders can no longer be questioned.
Telecom, routine UN Security Council session not shown
Kosovo's representative Vlora Citaku said these are no longer
the
subject of negotiation.
One
wonders if
South Sudan will go this way. Watch this site.
* * *
Kosovo
Minister
Tells
Other
Secessionists, You're On Your Own, Solidarity is Only
Emotional, Is Talking with Spain
By
Matthew
Russell
Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
July
29
-- Kosovo's Foreign Affairs Minister Skender Hyseni,
at the UN on Thursday, was asked if he saw Kosovo's unilateral
declaration of independence, and its upholding by the International
Court of Justice, as a precedent for others seeking independence.
“No one should
tie this to any other situation in the world,” Hyseni replied. He
is in New York lobbying non-recognizing states, including five in the
European Union, to now recognize Kosovo.
Inner
City
Press
asked
Hyseni, given his arguments about what Kosovars suffered from
Serbia, if Kosovo is in solidarity with other peoples which feel they
have a historical right to their own state.
“I'm getting
your
point,” Hyseni cut in. “I'm not going to mix my actions as
Foreign Affairs Minister with my feelings and emotions.”
If
the
response
means
that Hyseni personally feels such solidarity for other
suffering peoples, but the Kosovo's foreign policy includes no such
solidarity, it is problematic.
Hyseni (previously) at UN, solidarity not shown
Inner
City
Press
asked
Hyseni about Ukraine and Spain, which have said post-ICJ that
they will not recognize Kosovo, and beyond Spain about four other EU
members: the Slovak Republic, Romania, Greece and Cyprus.
Hyseni
said
“I
am
not aware of Spain saying it will not recognize... I am not aware of
the statement on the part of Ukraine.” Both statements are on the
record, as a Spanish journalist later pointed out.
Hyseni
said
he
“discusses
recognition” with his Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel
Moratinos, but not in
Spain, and as to the other four EU non - recognizers that “we do
get encouraging signals from those countries.” He said he did not
want to say more, to make Serbia's foreign minister Vuk Jeremic's
lobbying job easier.
Footnote:
Inner
City
Press
asked for an update on the violence in Mitrovica in
early July, which Hyseni previously blamed on ethnic Serbs. Nearly a
month later, does he have the evidence? “The investigation is going
in precisely that direction,” Hyseni said. We'll see.
, 
