МR. STANKOVIC URGED ETHNIC ALBANIANS TO RESUME DIALOGUE

19. June 2014.

Zoran Stankovic, the President of the Coordination Body for the Municipalities of Presevo, Bujanovac and Medvedja urged political leaders of the ethnic Albanians from these municipalities to resume dialogue with the Government of Serbia and thus resolve the current issues.

Mr. Stankovic said at the forum organized by OK radio in Vranje under the title of the “Rule of Law and Ethnic Relations in South Serbia” that without dialogue, which had been launched the year before, there was no progress in inter-ethnic relations in that area.

“We all want progress and we mustn’t allow our selfish reasons to stop us from moving along that road”, said Mr. Stankovic.

The President of the Coordination Body stressed that the Serbian government had a strategy for that area and voiced hope that the plan would be fully implemented in the following two years.

This position was supported by the Deputy Ombudsman, Robert Sepi, who said that any dialogue was better than the best monologue and called on the Albanians to better use the legal resources available to them.

The mayor of Presevo, Ragmi Mustafa, said that the dialogue between the Albanians and the Government of Serbia had been suspended because political leaders from the region agreed to speak only as equal partners, to which Mr. Stankovic replied that Serbia respected the Albanians from South Serbia more than the law obliged them to do.

The panel discussion the “Rule of Law and Ethnic Relations in South Serbia” was organized by OK Radio, as part of the project the “Rule of Law – Let’s Live Like all Normal People”, which the said medium implements within the framework of the Delegation of the European Union’s project “Strengthening Freedom of the Media”.

Source: Coordination Body and OK Radio