SERBIAN BODY "STARTLED" AT HAGUE'S REFUSAL TO
GIVE DOCUMENTS ON KOSOVO MISSING
BBC Monitoring International Reports - December 8, 2005
Text of report by Serbian independent news agency FoNet
Pristina, 8 December: A handover of the remains of nine Serbs discovered in mass
graves in Kosovo-Metohija will be carried out at Merdare administrative crossing
tomorrow, the Coordination Centre for Kosovo-Metohija has said, adding that the
working group for missing persons today in Pristina expressed its
dissatisfaction over achieved results in finding the truth about the missing.
The working group for the missing appealed to all those who could offer help for
any kind of information to report to the Serbian or the Albanian side, the
working group or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
The chairman of [Serbia-Montenegro] Council of Ministers' commission for missing
persons, Gvozden Gagic, told journalists that it had been assessed at the
meeting that some progress had been made, but that there still existed huge
obstacles in the process of finding truth about missing persons.
The president of the meeting, the head of the ICRC section for South East
Europe, Francois Stamm, filed a report which demanded that the Hague tribunal
submit to the working group all documentation which could possibly shed light on
the fate of the missing. He said that that tribunal had refused to submit any
kind of material.
"We were all startled by tribunal's response that it could not submit court
documentation to us, because we are not competent. This is why we agreed that
ICRC should carry out additional talks with chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte and
once again seek documentation from Kfor [NATO-led Kosovo Force] which, too, is
in possession of documents about the missing," Gagic said.
The Belgrade part of the working group for the missing was headed by the
chairman of the Serbia-Montenegro parliamentary committee for Kosovo-Metohija,
Veljko Odalovic, while Ragip Zekolli headed the Albanian part.
On behalf of UNMIK [UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo], the director
of the judiciary sector, [Legal Director] Thomas Monahan, attended the meeting.
It was agreed at the meeting that the next meeting be held in Belgrade at the
end of January 2006.
Source: FoNet news agency, Belgrade, in Serbian
1242 gmt 8 Dec 05
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