As much as 58 pct of Kosovo's territory - including state, private and "socially" and church-owned real estate - is the property of Serbia.

It belongs to the state, its citizens and institutions, and the state has the original cadastre documentation to prove this, Tanjug is reporting, citing former head of the Kosovo and Metohija Cadastre Slavica Radomirovic.

"The material in our possession is enormous, and protected at Geozavod in Belgrade. For years, the (Kosovo) Albanians have been requesting that we return the documentation because of the legal uncertainty for all Kosovo citizens, but we have no reason to return it as we would not improve the position of the Serbs by returning the cadastre," Radomirovic said.

This documentation is now Serbia's firmest argument against the illegal decision of the Kosovo government to seize all immobile property of Serbia in the province.

Radomirovic warned that the efforts to usurp Serbian property there has been ongoing for a long time, and that Pristina has set up its own castre service "based on forgeries."

A technical agreement had been reached to "define" the issue of property in Kosovo during the EU-sponsored Belgrade-Pristina dialogue by comparing the originals from 1999 to Pristina's "reconstructed cadastre" documents - but this eventually came to nothing.

The comparison was to be done by Belgrade, Pristina, and the international community - "but when the Albanians realized that their forgeries would surface in the process, the negotiations died down."

Radomirovic said that she in 1999 personally organized and took part in relocating the documents, as NATO troops were entering the southern province.

She was joined by her colleagues from Vranje and Kursumlija, and by numerous volunteers, who carried out "tons and tons of paper" from the cadastre's archives in Kosovo and brought them to Belgrade.

The original documentation is incomplete only for seven municipalities, Radomirovic explained, but stressed that there are copies of all documents.

According to some assessments, the value of the property that Pristina is now trying to seize reaches ten billion euros, and includes land, buildings, business premises, state-owned companies, and sporting venues.

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