PRESS CONFERENCE BY FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE BY FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF YUGOSLAVIA

Referring to a recently released Amnesty International report, Vladislav Jovanovic, Chargé d’affaires of the Mission of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia told correspondents this morning at Headquarters that the latest revelations about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) aggression in his country demonstrated that the armed attacks had not only been illegal but criminal and deserved to be scrutinized. A simple statement to the contrary in the Security Council by Carla Del Ponte, Chief Prosecutor for the International Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, could not relieve NATO of its culpability.

His country had accepted the deployment of the United Nations Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) and KFOR, the NATO-led force, and had placed its confidence in the United Nations, but the results had been disappointing, he said this morning in a Headquarters press conference. Security Council resolution 1244 (1999) had been almost totally ignored. Moreover, by failing to act quickly and efficiently against the killings of non-ethnic Albanians, primary responsibility lay with UNMIK and KFOR for the deteriorating situation in Kosovo.

There had been over 5,000 terrorist attacks against Serbs and other non- ethnic Albanians and 1,000 non-ethnic Albanians had been killed and 1,000 abducted with their whereabouts still unknown, he said. Monasteries and religious shrines had been attacked and destroyed. In the last 10 days alone, 20 Serbs had been killed because of their ethnicity.

Stating that tomorrow’s Security Council meeting should draw its conclusions from “the real situation” in Kosovo, he said the Government had issued a memorandum yesterday with its demands regarding Kosovo. The Government requested an immediate return and deployment of the Yugoslav army and police to the area to ensure, among other things, the protection of the international borders with Albania and Macedonia and to ensure the proper functioning of the local administration as well as that of essential public services. It condemned and declared null and void regulations adopted by Bernard Kouchner, the Secretary- General’s Special Representative.

The memorandum called for the withdrawal of the UNMIK and KFOR forces. Furthermore, his country condemned the continued aggression by NATO against Serbs and other non-ethnic Albanians and called for compensation for the damages inflicted by Albanian terrorists, which UNMIK and KFOR had allowed.

* *** *