The UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Bintou Keita had separate meetings on Monday with Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic, Office for Kosovo and Metohija Director Marko Djuric and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.
Serbian officials told her that Serbia is committed to finding a compromise solution for Kosovo and warned of increasingly frequent incidents.
Dacic told Keita that the UNMIK mission needs to remain in place unchanged as a guarantee of status neutrality and expressed Serbia’s readiness to continue its engagement in peace operations and to further promote cooperation in the most important UN activities, a press release said.
It added that the UN delegation, which included UNMIK chief Zahir Tanin and UN Belgrade office head Simona-Mirela Miculescu, “conveyed the importance that the UN attaches to the continued engagement of Serbia in five peace operations with more than 300 personnel preserving peace and security in the world”.
A press release from Keitu’s meeting with Djuric said they discussed the problems of Serbs living in Kosovo, especially a series of attacks over the past month with the Kosovo Office chief saying that the Albanian political elite in Pristina is making increasingly frequent “threatening, belligerent statements”.
Djuric is quoted as saying that the situation in Kosovo requires regular UN Security Council sessions with the KFOR Mission remaining in place as a guarantee of safety for the Serbs.
The press release said that Djuric also “informed the UN delegation of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue”.
UN officials also met with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who expressed concern over frequent attacks against Serbs in Kosovo. President Vucic also welcomed good cooperation with United Nations, and highlighted importance of UNMIK for maintaining peace and stability, as well as protection of Serb people in Kosovo.
“Serbia attaches particular importance to UNMIK in Kosovo, to which Serbian and other non-Albanian population trust the most,” President Vucic said, Serbian media reported.
