The Prime Minister of Kosovo, Ramush Haradinaj, held today a meeting with the Government Committee for the Missing Persons and Kosovo organisations that deal with the issue of the missing persons.
Haradinaj said that the intention of the meeting is unification of all individuals who are involved on the issue of the missing persons, in order to identify actions that should be undertaken in the future.
Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj will meet today with representatives of the government's Missing Persons Commission and organizations that are dealing with the issue of missing persons in Kosovo.
Representatives of the Serbian Association of Families of the Abducted and Missing Persons are not invited to this meeting.
Chair of the Serbian Government Missing Persons Commission, Veljko Odalovic, stated that this year, only two Serb families took over the bodies exhumed in Kosovo, KIM Radio reported.
Odalovic also stated to BETA news agency there are no exhumations in Kosovo at the moment and the question remains whether activities would continue by the end of the year.
Out of 1.600 persons still missing in Kosovo, more than 550 are of Serbian nationality, Serbian media reported.
The Pristina authorities exhumed the body of an unidentified person in an Albanian village near the border with Kosovo, believed to have been buried there during the war 1999.
Kosovo’s Institute of Forensic Medicine together with the EU rule-of-law mission EULEX, under the supervision of Kosovo’s war crimes prosecutor Drita Hajdari, exhumed an unidentified person’s body in the village of Domaj in Albania on Monday.
Events to mark the International Day of the Disappeared in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and Serbia sought to raise awareness that 12,000 people are still missing from the 1990s wars.
Flowers were laid and candles lit across the former Yugoslavia at events to commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared on Wednesday in a bid to highlight the fact that the bodies of 12,000 of the estimated 40,000 missing persons from the 1990s wars have still not been found.
The Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Kosovo, Ruairi O’Connell, has requested on the International Day of the Disappeared, has requested to enlighten the fate of the missing persons in Kosovo.
“On International Day of the Disappeared, I salute the courage, dignity and determination of families to find truth and justice. I feel their pain and loss, and I hope governments will do all they can, including by releasing information, to resolve the fate of the missing and to support families left behind,” O’Connell wrote.
On the occasion of the International Day of Missing Persons, gatherings would be organized in Gracanica and Pristina today.
As it was announced, gathering in Gracanica would start at 11.00, while in Pristina this day would be marked by laying flowers at the monument dedicated to the missing persons nearby the Kosovo Assembly.
Politicians’ promises that the destiny of the missing persons during the war in Kosovo would be resolved and this issue would become a topic of the Brussels dialogue, is just pouring salt to the wounds, said Coordinator of Missing Persons Association in Kosovo, Milorad Trifunovic, RTV Puls reported.
Director of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Đurić recalled in a written statement to the press that 19 years ago, journalists Đuro Slavuj and Ranko Perenić disappeared near Orahovac/Rahovec, and the families still do not have any information about their fate, which is ''a big stain'' of those who take care of the establishment of the rule of law in Kosovo.
It has been nearly 18 years since Natasa Scepanovic has seen her parents.