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DE RUEHPS #0335/01 1101413
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 201413Z APR 06
FM USOFFICE PRISTINA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6031
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0650
RHMFISS/CDR USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE
RUFOADA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK
RHFMIUU/AFSOUTH NAPLES IT
RHMFIUU/CDR TF FALCON
RHEFDIA/DIA WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RUEPGEA/CDR650THMIGP SHAPE BE
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUEAWJA/DEPT OF JUSTICE WASHDC
RUFOANA/USNIC PRISTINA SR

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 PRISTINA 000335 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR DRL, INL, EUR/SCE, AND EUR/SSA, NSC FOR BRAUN, 
USUN FOR DREW SCHUFLETOWSKI, USOSCE FOR STEVE STEGER 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KDEM UNMIK YI
SUBJECT: KOSOVO: A UNIFIED CONTACT GROUP PRESSES STANDARDS, 
FLEXIBILITY 
 
 
Sensitive but unclassified; please protect accordingly. 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY. Representatives of the Contact Group (CG) 
visited Kosovo April 6-7 to highlight CG unity and deliver a 
focused message about the importance of the standards and 
elements of an eventual future status settlement; by prior 
agreement, the CG did not address the status outcome itself. 
CG representatives met in Mitrovica with the mayors of the 
three northern municipalities, who said that Kosovo's Serbs 
are not interested in building or participating in Kosovo 
government institutions that emerge after status is 
determined.  In Pristina, SRSG Soren Jessen-Petersen gave an 
upbeat assessment of Kosovo's new government and COMKFOR 
Guiseppe Valotto asserted that KFOR was more capable now to 
respond to civil unrest than it had been in the past.  The 
Kosovo Albanian status negotiating team pledged to the CG to 
focus on the standards and take other measures to build 
confidence with Kosovo's minorities; opposition leader Hashim 
Thaci used the meeting to blast the "institutionalized 
corruption" of the current government.  In response, CG 
representatives asked Kosovo Albanian leaders to be flexible 
and generous in the Kosovo status negotiations and to 
reinvigorate work on the standards.  President Fatmir Sejdiu 
and Prime Minister Agim Ceku, both newcomers, impressed the 
CG with their seriousness.  Moderate Kosovo Serbs spoke 
critically of Belgrade, asked for CG support for them to 
rejoin Kosovo institutions and pressed for 
constitutionally-based rights guarantees.  Non-Serb 
minorities (Roma, Turk, Bosniak), deeply appreciative of the 
CG's attention, offered support for decentralization, 
provided it addresses their communities' specific needs.  END 
SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Representatives of the Contact Group (CG) visited 
Kosovo April 6-7, 2006 after meetings earlier in the week in 
Athens and Belgrade.  DAS Rosemary DiCarlo and Kosovo desk 
officer Joshua Black represented the United States; also 
attending were Johannes Haindl (Germany), Gerard McGurk 
(United Kingdom), Raimondo De Cardona (Italy), Jean-Francois 
Terral (France), Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko (Russia), Hannes 
Porias (Austria/EU Presidency) and Alexandros Giannis (EU). 
In order to highlight CG unity, the CG agreed in advance to 
not discuss the status outcome, but rather to highlight the 
elements of an eventual settlement, the importance of 
standards implementation and the need to engage 
constructively in the ongoing status negotiations. 
 
Northern Mayors Want No Part in an Independent Kosovo 
--------------------------------------------- -------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) On April 6 CG representatives met in north Mitrovica 
with the hard-line mayors of Zvecan, Zubin Potok and 
Leposavic and the Mitrovica head of the Serbian government 
Coordination Center for Kosovo (CCK).  All mayors said they 
refused to accept the idea that the protection of Kosovo 
Serbs is a CG priority.  They also rejected any sort of 
participation in Kosovo government institutions unless there 
were a veto mechanism to protect minority interests.  The 
three mayors urged the CG not to rush the status process and 
stated that conditions do not yet exist for 
internally-displaced persons in Kosovo to return to their 
homes.  Leposavic mayor Velimir Bojovic referred to Kosovo's 
ethnic Albanians as "terrorists" and warned the CG against 
rewarding them with their own state.  DAS DiCarlo asserted 
decentralization can protect Serbs and facilitate 
transparently-funded assistance from Belgrade.  She repeated 
the CG position that there can be no partition of Kosovo. 
The French representative said that the idea of a separate 
Serb "entity" does not fit the Kosovo reality, especially for 
Kosovo Serbs in enclaves south of the Ibar.  He argued that 
the creation of new municipalities and decentralization would 
achieve the same ends, but without the de facto division of 
Kosovo. 
 
¶4. (SBU) CG representatives criticized a recent CCK directive 
forcing Kosovo Serbs to chose between their Belgrade and 
 
PRISTINA 00000335  002 OF 004 
 
 
Pristina salaries.  CG representatives contended the CCK 
ultimatum reinforces parallel structures and undermines the 
creation of a multi-ethnic entity.  DiCarlo said the CG 
strongly opposes the directive that teachers chose between 
Pristina and Belgrade salaries as disadvantaging an already 
disadvantaged population.  The mayors said the additional 
salaries from Kosovo's Consolidated Budget were paltry when 
compared to those paid by Belgrade and criticized Pristina 
for not providing benefits such as pensions and social 
security. 
 
¶5. (SBU) After the meeting, the CG issued a short press 
statement that called for greater cooperation on both sides 
of the Ibar River to solve the problems of the Mitrovica 
region.  The statement also reaffirmed the CG's opposition to 
the partition of Kosovo, de facto or otherwise. 
 
UNMIK Asks CG for Help on Standards Implementation 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
 
¶6. (SBU) SRSG Soren Jessen-Petersen presented an upbeat 
picture of the new Kosovo government in his meeting with the 
CG April 7 in Pristina.  Jessen-Petersen said he has been 
very pleased with new Prime Minister Agim Ceku, particularly 
his statements on multi-ethnicity, and his attempt to 
re-energize the government.  He asked the CG to send Kosovo 
leaders a clear message: "we know what you want as the 
outcome of final status talks, but now you must earn it."  On 
the standards, he asked the CG to push for progress on rule 
of law, freedom of movement, returns and church 
reconstruction.  He asked that CG liaison offices in Pristina 
support the standards working groups. 
 
¶7. (SBU) COMKFOR Lt. General Guiseppe Valotto reported that 
KFOR troop strength is down substantially from the 41,000 
immediately after the end of the conflict in 1999, and KFOR 
is better capable of responding to threats than it was during 
the March 2004 riots.  He noted the lesson learned from the 
March riots was that KFOR needed to provide riot control.  He 
said he hoped KFOR would complete its transformation from a 
brigade to a task force structure before his own planned 
departure in early September 2006. 
 
Giving the Kosovo Unity Team Advice on Next Steps 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶8. (SBU) Meeting with President Fatmir Sejdiu, DiCarlo asked 
for more outreach and public statements encouraging 
tolerance, as well as flexibility and compromise in the 
status negotiations.  Other CG representatives told Sejdiu 
that Kosovo Albanians must show a commitment to 
multi-ethnicity and pressed for more progress and tangible 
results on return of property, investigation of inter-ethnic 
crimes and development of the rule of law.  Sejdiu agreed 
that the return of Kosovo Serbs is a key standard that needs 
more work and added that Kosovo Albanians need to make Serbs 
feel more at home and encourage them to stay. 
 
¶9. (SBU) The Kosovo Albanian final status negotiating team 
(the "Unity Team") gave themselves high marks for recent 
developments in Vienna and Pristina.  Opposition leader Veton 
Surroi touted achievements of the minority consultative 
process he chairs, including the inclusion of non-Serb 
minorities on all Kosovo delegations to the Vienna talks, the 
imminent designation of the Roma language as one of Kosovo's 
official languages (a first in Europe, he claimed), and the 
holding of an informal dialogue over several days in Durres, 
Albania with Kosovo Serb leaders from the Serbian List for 
Kosovo and Metohija (SLKM).  He noted that he had briefed 
SLKM members in Durres on what had happened at the Vienna 
meetings, something he said Belgrade had failed to do, and he 
urged the CG to encourage SLKM to keep open this 
communication channel. 
 
¶10. (SBU) Unity Team coordinator Blerim Shala said team 
members were working intensively to get ready for what they 
 
PRISTINA 00000335  003 OF 004 
 
 
hoped would be an accelerated pace of meetings facilitated by 
Special Envoy Ahtisaari.  While noting the team's red lines 
on decentralization (no third layer of government, no 
partition of Kosovo), he said there was plenty of room for 
generous proposals on Mitrovica, preservation of cultural 
heritage, and other matters. 
 
¶11. (SBU) Speaking on behalf of the CG, DiCarlo enumerated 
some of the CG's own status priorities:  a negotiated 
settlement in 2006; a multi-ethnic Kosovo acceptable to the 
Kosovo people; no new layer of government; facilitation of 
inter-municipal cooperation; transparent assistance from 
Belgrade for Kosovo Serb communities; and creation of new 
municipalities.  DiCarlo urged the Unity Team to draft a new 
proposal on the preservation of cultural and religious 
heritage and make more public statements on tolerance, 
multi-ethnicity, compromise and the standards.  DiCarlo 
emphasized that Kosovo negotiators must not take a 
nothing-is-agreed-until-everything-is-agreed position, as 
they did in Vienna.  She also listed a series of specific 
actions on the standards that she said could help build 
confidence and a better climate for the negotiations:  a zero 
tolerance initiative on inter-ethnic crime; aggressively 
removing ethnic graffiti; adjudicating property rights and 
implementing a rental scheme for people who live in homes 
owned by displaced persons; passing stalled minority rights 
legislation; and accelerating the restoration of Serbian 
Orthodox churches damaged in the March 2004 riots. 
 
¶12. (SBU) President Sejdiu said that his outreach efforts are 
coordinated with the SRSG and guided by a simple formula -- 
property, practical rights, and the right to return to one's 
own home.  He called for the Vienna process to begin to focus 
on Mitrovica, economic development, and missing persons.  PM 
Agim Ceku said he is well aware of the importance of the 
SRSG's next report to the United Nations Security Council. 
He announced that an internationally known Serb minority 
representative would lead a task force in the PM's office to 
draft an action plan on "how we will work with minorities." 
Referring to the CG's specific confidence-building 
suggestions, Ceku said he agreed with a zero-tolerance 
approach to inter-ethnic crime and pledged that the newly 
established Ministry of Internal Affairs would work closely 
with UNMIK Police and the Kosovo Police Service to implement 
this approach and report more regularly on police 
interventions.  He said the Assembly would hold a special 
session on the standards and would expedite consideration of 
legislation on language policy and other minority rights 
issues.  Ceku reported that a new agency director would be 
appointed to focus on corruption and that the newly created 
Kosovo Property Agency would now have jurisdiction over 
outstanding property claims.  He said a new working group on 
missing persons would be headed by the president of the 
Center for Human Rights and Freedoms, a respected Kosovar NGO. 
 
¶13. (SBU) The Italian representative warned that the Kosovo 
delegation's performance in the third Vienna meeting was "not 
as smooth" as in the first two and urged a rededication to 
making progress on as many details as possible.  He suggested 
that the constraints under which the Belgrade delegation was 
laboring presented an opportunity for the Pristina delegation 
to send a high-minded message to the Kosovo Serb minority. 
The French representative pushed the Unity Team to be 
forthcoming on proposals for inter-municipal cooperation, 
including trans-border cooperation. 
 
¶14.  In a brief follow-on session with Ceku, DiCarlo informed 
him that the CG had pressed Belgrade to endorse Kosovo Serb 
participation in the PISG and had harshly criticized the 
CCK's salary initiative.  The German representative urged 
Ceku to do more to move Kosovo decentralization forward and, 
referring to the CG's meeting with northern Kosovo mayors, 
urged Ceku to cultivate the mayors as apparent "people of 
good will."  Ceku replied that "we are implementing what can 
be implemented" on decentralization, referring in particular 
to the opening of seven police substations in Kosovo Serb 
 
PRISTINA 00000335  004 OF 004 
 
 
areas with another seven planned. 
 
SLKM Wants Explicit CG Support to Return to PISG Institutions 
--------------------------------------------- ---------------- 
 
¶15. (SBU) In its meeting with SLKM representatives Oliver 
Ivanovic, Randjel Nojkic and Goran Bogdanovic, the CG 
stressed that Kosovo Serbs must participate in Kosovo 
institutions in order to get the guarantees they need to live 
here.  SLKM representatives agreed, but asked the CG to 
support their participation and help guarantee they would not 
be mere "decoration" to prove that the Kosovo government was 
inclusive.  Ivanovic complained bitterly about the CCK 
directive on Kosovo Serb salaries, which he called 
"catastrophic."  He asked that minority rights be 
specifically enshrined in Kosovo's constitution instead of 
through legislation.  The French representative told the 
group that decentralization -- with the opportunity for real 
inter-municipal cooperation -- is the best way to give local 
self-government.  In response, the Kosovo Serbs offered 
differing views on the prospects for decentralization in 
Kosovo.  Ivanovic asserted that ethnic Serbs needed several 
new Kosovo Serb-majority, but not mono-ethnic, municipalities 
of significant size and functionality so as to be 
sustainable.  Bogdanovic said the establishment of new 
municipalities would create conditions for returns.  Nojkic 
opined that imposed decentralization will not last, and it is 
therefore important that Kosovo Serbs participate in 
negotiations on this topic.  He added that Belgrade's 
proposal for vertical ties with Serb municipalities could 
only be accomplished if it was done in accordance with Kosovo 
law. 
 
Non-Serb Minorities Want to be Heard 
------------------------------------ 
 
¶16. (SBU) The CG also met with representatives of Kosovo's 
non-Serb minority communities:  Kosovo Health Minister Sadrik 
Idrizi (Bosniak), Kosovo Assembly presidency member Mahir 
Yagcilar (Turkish), caucus leader Dzezair Murati (Bosniak) 
and Kosovo Assembly member Haxhi Zylfi Mergja (Roma).  These 
representatives asserted that Kosovo's non-Serb minorities do 
not want to be left out of status discussions and were 
therefore appreciative the CG agreed to meet with them.  They 
praised U.S. Office Pristina for its intense, long-term 
interest in non-Serb minorities and chided the other CG 
liaison offices for their perceived indifference.  While they 
pledged support for decentralization in general, they asked 
for clear criteria for creating new municipalities.  They 
noted that except for the pilot project municipality in the 
mono-ethnic Turkish town of Mamusha, most of Kosovo's 
non-Serb minorities live in multi-ethnic communities.  They 
said they share the view of the Serb minority that minority 
rights should be included in Kosovo's eventual constitution. 
 
¶17. (U)  DAS DiCarlo cleared on this message.  Post clears 
this message in its entirety for release to Special Envoy 
Ahtisaari. 
GOLDBERG