VZCZCXRO6517
OO RUEHAST
DE RUEHPS #0611/01 2011649
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
O 201649Z JUL 06
FM USOFFICE PRISTINA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 6323
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0775
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 02 PRISTINA 000611 
 
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: DETAILS OF SLKM PROPOSAL ON 
DECENTRALIZATION 
 
REF: PRISTINA 531 
 
PRISTINA 00000611  001.2 OF 002 
 
 
Sensitive, But Unclassified; Please Protect Accordingly. 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY:  Oliver Ivanovic views his Serbian List for 
Kosovo and Metohija (SLKM) plan for seven new Serb-majority 
municipalities and the enlargement of an eight existing 
municipality (Novo Brdo) as a bridge between the current 
proposals on new municipalities by the Serbian and Kosovo 
government negotiators.  Ivanovic was not able to brief his 
proposal, as he had hoped, to Serbian and Kosovo government 
officials prior to July 19 decentralization talks in Vienna. 
The SLKM proposal does improve on the most recent proposal 
from Ahtisaari's team on Mitrovica, but it will be difficult 
to convince the Kosovo negotiating team to accept many of his 
proposals to divide existing towns and significantly enlarge 
the municipality of Novo Brdo by taking a large amount of 
contiguous territory from the neighboring municipalities of 
Gjilan and Kamenica.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (SBU) Oliver Ivanovic discussed his SLKM proposal (reftel) 
for seven new ethnic Serb majority municipalities with 
PolOffs on July 13.  Although Ivanovic wanted to brief 
Serbian Prime Minister Kostunica and President Boris Tadic in 
Belgrade and then Kosovo Deputy Prime Minister Lutfi Haziri 
before the July 19 talks in Vienna on decentralization, he 
was unable to do so.  According to Ivanovic, under his plan 
85 percent of Serbs in Kosovo would live in a Serb majority 
municipality.  The SLKM plan differs from that proposed by 
the office of UN Special Envoy for Kosovo (UNOSEK) Martti 
Ahtisaari in several key areas.  UNOSEK wants to combine 
several majority Serb areas in and around Gracanica and 
Lipljan into one large municipality, while Ivanovic would 
prefer to see them as two separate majority-Serb 
municipalities.  Ivanovic does not want the new municipality 
created in northern Mitrovica to be merged into the existing 
municipality of Zvecan as UNOSEK has proposed, but he does 
want it to include several Serb and Albanian villages north 
of the Ibar River that are included in the current unitary 
Mitrovica municipality.  Ivanovic persists in asking for the 
new Serb majority municipality of Priluzije composed of 
cadastral zones from the existing municipalities of Vushtrri 
and Obilic.  There are also minor differences between the two 
plans in the number of cadastral zones in the proposed new 
municipalities of Ranilug, Partesh and Kllokot (referred to 
as "Vrbovac" in the SLKM proposal) as well as the number of 
cadastral zones from neighboring Gjilan and Kamenica that 
will be added to the enlarged majority Serb municipality of 
Novo Brdo. 
 
¶3. (SBU) PolOff pressed Ivanovic to explain how many of his 
smaller proposed municipalities would have a sufficient 
economic base to support a new municipality.  He replied that 
most of the local economies would be agriculture-based.  He 
added that Gracanica is already a large town by Kosovo 
standards and has the monastery with its possibilities for 
tourism, while Lipljan has a bottling facility that he 
believes would employ Serb residents.  Ivanovic similarly 
thinks that the ethnic Albanian owner of the now privatized 
mineral water bottling facility in Kllokot could also be 
"convinced" to employ local Serbs if a new Serb majority 
municipal is created there.  Ivanovic said that the 
Government of Serbia would build/rehabilitate a transformer 
factory in his proposed municipality of Priluzje to employ 
local Serbs there. 
 
¶4. (SBU) PolOff shared the SLKM proposal on July 14 with 
Clarisse Pasztory, senior political advisor on 
decentralization to Deputy Prime Minister (and the head of 
Kosovo's negotiating team on decentralization) Lutfi Haziri. 
Pasztory was uniformly negative on the proposal, particularly 
repeated efforts by Ivanovic at "ethnically engineering" Serb 
majority municipalities by dividing existing urban areas such 
as the towns of Lipljan, Gjilan and Kamenica by carving out 
their ethnic Serb inhabitants.  She questioned the viability 
of the two smallest of his proposals -- Partesh and Kllokot 
 
PRISTINA 00000611  002.2 OF 002 
 
 
with just under 5,000 inhabitants each.  Pasztory would 
prefer that these Serb villages instead become sub-municipal 
units within the existing ethnic Albanian majority 
municipalities of Gjilan and Viti, respectively. 
 
¶5. (SBU) Pasztory told PolOff that Deputy Prime Minister 
Haziri noted that the new municipalities proposed by Ivanovic 
correspond exactly to the areas where the SLKM members in the 
Kosovo Assembly live.  She was adamant that the new 
municipality in northern Mitrovica be limited to the urban 
town and not include any surrounding villages and called the 
proposed municipality carved out of Obilic and Vushtrri a 
"land grab" for the lignite deposits and power station 
located there.  She also took issue with Ivanovic's (and 
UNOSEK's) proposals on expanding Novo Brdo.  She believes 
neither take into account the physical topography of the 
region because both merge cadastral zones separated by 
mountains with no connecting roads. 
 
¶6. (SBU) COMMENT:  Although Ivanovic was not able to discuss 
his proposal with Serbian and Kosovo government officials 
prior to the July 19 meeting on decentralization in Vienna, 
he deserves credit for coming up with a thoughtful plan that 
he hoped would find a middle ground between them.  His plan, 
however, creates a patchwork of nearly contiguous majority 
Serb municipalities of questionable sustainability, hardly 
something the Kosovo government will approve.  By accepting 
new innocuous municipalities of Partesh and Kllokot, the 
Kosovo negotiating team has agreed to the least objectionable 
of Ivanovic's proposals, perhaps in the hope of turning off 
his other proposed municipalities.  END COMMENT. 
 
¶7. (U) U.S. Office Pristina clears this cable for release in 
its entirety to U.N. Special Envoy for Kosovo Martti 
Ahtisaari. 
MCBRIDE