Russia says Kosovo Serbs isolated as never before

Russia says Kosovo Serbs isolated as never before
ITAR-TASS - August 6, 2004

UNITED NATIONS, August 6 - The rights of Kosovo Serb and other minorities continue to be infringed and the isolation of non-Albanian communities has increased in the past three years in the province, according to Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Andrei Denisov.

"The leaders of the Albanian majority in Kosovo bear the main responsibility for improving relations with minority communities that were the targets of premeditated violence in March", he told the UN Security Council Thursday that discussed the situation in Kosovo.

Denisov qualified the March tragic events as "a deliberate ethnic cleansing attempt against the non-Albanian population of the territory" and expressed bewilderment over the refusal of Kosovo interim self-government "to investigate and punish local and municipal bodies and leaders of political movements who promoted by their statements or inaction the March violence, to denounce the instigations in regional mass media".

Some 30 people were killed and over 800 wounded in three days of armed clashes in Kosovo in March. A hundred of them were UN staff and local policemen, 55 were KFOR officers and men. Over 3,500 Kosovo Serbs became refugees, dozens of Orthodox churches and cathedrals were destroyed and burned down.

Denisov said Russia insists on a full implementation of the UN Resolution 1244 of 1999. "Only a real institution in Kosovo of democratic standards can serve as the basis for the Security Council to pass a decision on the beginning of a discussion on the future status" of Kosovo, he said.