PRESS CONFERENCE BY FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), instead of being neutralized, was now the de facto master of the situation in most cities and towns in the Serbian province, Vladislav Jovanovic, Chargé d'Affaires at the Permanent Mission of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to the United Nations, told correspondents at Headquarters this morning.

At a press conference sponsored by his mission, Mr. Jovanovic blamed the KLA for terrorist and other acts of violence in Kosovo, including killings, kidnappings, rapes, intimidation, ethnic cleansing and destruction of property. The lawless situation had resulted in the almost total elimination of Serbs and other non-Albanians from Kosovo.

That mass ethnic-cleansing operation was being carried out in the presence of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) and the KFOR international force and often with their complicity, he said. The UNMIK and KFOR had allowed a process to develop which was different and opposite to that envisaged by Security Council resolution 1244 (1999), which had established the mission.

Mr. Jovanovic said there had been a growing number of open, and increasingly impertinent, attempts by some circles and countries, particularly the United States, to interpret the mandate of resolution 1244 in favour of those with separatist aspirations. However, that resolution was clear, and whoever wished to revise it or to do other than implement its mandate was playing with fire.

Resolution 1244 clearly defined the mandate of the KFOR international presence and the UNMIK, he said. It was up to the UNMIK to establish an interim administration, with the aim of consolidating conditions in the province, and to create the necessary conditions for a dialogue between the Yugoslav and Serbian officials and the population of Kosovo. That dialogue should lead to substantial autonomy for the province under local Serbian administration.

He said that only the consistent implementation of resolution 1244 could lead to final stability in Kosovo and, through that, to stability in the region. Failure to implement it consistently could lead to the opposite result, which would be very dangerous for peace, stability and prosperity, not only for the province, but for the entire region.

Claims that violence was decreasing in Kosovo and that respect for law and order was increasing were untrue, he said. Such claims were a deception aimed at buying time for separatists, terrorists and their foreign patrons in order to create a situation totally different from that envisaged by resolution 1244.

Jovanovic Press Conference - 2 - 19 November 1999

He said that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, instead of being strictly respected, as an integral component of the mandate set out in resolution 1244, had been systematically undermined, challenged and defied.

Mr. Jovanovic said that his country had proposed that it sign, with the United Nations Secretariat, a comprehensive agreement on the implementation of resolution 1244. That proposal had been rejected by the Secretariat for reasons familiar to the interpretation that the mandate in Kosovo was not to assure the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, but to lead the province away from it.

A correspondent asked for specific examples of the United States favouring the separatists.

Mr. Jovanovic replied that KFOR, in which the United States was the dominant force, had allowed armed KLA units to enter Kosovo from Albania and Macedonia. After nearly three months, instead of being disarmed, the KLA, had been transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps, which was a disguised means of allowing it to continue its existence as a military organization.

Even after that transformation, Serbs and others were the targets of almost daily attacks by people armed with mortars, machine-guns and other weapons, he said. Instead of being disbanded and disarmed, the KLA still existed, not only as the Kosovo Protection Corps, but outside that framework as well.

He said that the United States had praised the regulations imposed by Bernard Kouchner, Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Kosovo, which were openly opposed to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations, he said, had encouraged Mr. Kouchner not to listen to the bureaucrats at Headquarters, but to take his own decisions. Those decisions were expected to fit in with the objectives and strategy of the United States in Kosovo and in the region.

Another journalist asked for a comment on the Secretary-General's report on Srbrenica and on his criticism of the international community's failure to intervene.

In response, Mr. Jovanovic said that the Secretary-General's well- known views on limited sovereignty and the international community's right to intervene in cases of massive human rights violations had been opposed by a great number of Member States during the plenary debate of the General Assembly.

He said that meant that the majority view in the world was in favour of protecting sovereignty and territorial integrity of States from a very dangerous tendency to empower some regional Powers or

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regional organizations to intervene in other countries under a humanitarian pretext.

Recently in the Security Council, he said, it had been disclosed by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that all the stories about mass graves in Kosovo were not true. Altogether, only some 2,000 bodies had been found to date, including victims of the KLA, some Serbs and people who had died of natural causes.

Asked if he was saying that no Serbs had been responsible for those 2,000 killings and other atrocities, he said there had been a war in Kosovo waged by terrorists against Yugoslav authorities and civilians. Counter-terrorist actions had been repeatedly waged by Yugoslav police and later by the Yugoslav army. As in any war, civilians had been unwitting victims of the fighting on both sides.

He said that in the absence of a security presence in Kosovo following the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing campaign, there had been cases of score-settling among civilians, mostly by Serbs against Albanians, but also by others. Yugoslav police had returned and arrested the culprits as well as paramilitary groups that had tried to impose their own justice.

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