Kosovo Serbs hope that President Tomislav Nikolic’s new ‘Kosovo platform’ will finally address the longstanding issue of Serbs who were abducted or went missing during and after the war.
The Association of Missing and Kidnapped Kosovo Serbs said on Monday that Nikolic’s so-called ‘Kosovo platform’ was their “last hope” of finding out what happened to more than 1,000 Kosovo Serbs who went missing during and after the 1999 war.
“None of the governments so far, neither the presidents nor the prime ministers of Serbia, in many platforms or resolutions about Kosovo and Metohija have ever requested the return of the abducted Kosovo Serbs,” the association said in a statement.
“They were not interested in kidnapped Serbs, and proved that, like the international community, Hague Tribunal and [EU rule-of-law mission] EULEX court [in Kosovo], they ignore Serbian victims,” it said, adding that Nikolic has a chance to change that now.
Nikolic said last week that he had prepared a new platform for Kosovo that he will send to the Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic this week, after which it will be forwarded to parliament for ratification.
His plan envisages that Belgrade will continue the ongoing EU-facilitated negotiations with Pristina in “good faith”, but that it will never recognise Kosovo as a state, only as its province with wider autonomy.
The platform also proposes wider autonomy for Serb-run municipalities in Kosovo and demands more rights for the Serb minority in general. It also calls on international community to enable the safe return of those expelled after the Kosovo war and prosecution of Kosovo Liberation Army commanders for crimes committed in 1999.
Nikolic’s strategy urges the speedy establishment of the planned new EU-backed special court for Kosovo, which is expected to prosecute senior Kosovo Liberation Army officials for alleged crimes committed between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 2000.
It is expected that Kosovo parliament will adopted the constitutional amendment needed for the formation of the court by end of May, which will then open the way for a draft law on the special court to be voted on as well.
The formation of the court has caused dismay in Kosovo, where many people see the KLA as liberators from Serbia’s oppressive rule, while in Serbia it seen as crucial as it aims to punish those who abducted and killed Kosovo Serbs after Serbian forces withdraw from Kosovo in July 1999.
It is unknown how Nikolic’s platform will affect the ongoing negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina.
The EU-led dialogue between Kosovo and Serbia began in March 2011, first only on a technical level. It became a high-level dialogue in October 2012, culminating in the April 2013 Agreement for the Normalisation of Relations, known as the Brussels Agreement.
The goal of the Brussels Agreement is to deal with ongoing political and technical issues between Kosovo and Serbia, such as membership of international organisations, participation in conferences, and issues relating to the Serb minority in Kosovo.
So far it has not tackled post-war issues such as missing persons and war crimes prosecutions, although both Albanians and Serb families of the missing have urged the EU to address this subject in formal negotiations.
