Kosovo Serbs to form municipal authorities in the next ten days

Serbian Minister for Kosovo Slobodan Samardzic said in Gracanica on Monday that local municipal assemblies in Kosovo would be constituted in the next ten days.

(KosovoCompromise Staff) Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Samardzic said that the electoral commission had already given some instructions for the establishment of municipal assemblies in Kosovo following the May 11 elections.

"The constitution of local councils and administration is very important, because Serbia would implement its functions in the province legally and legitimately through these local bodies of authority", Samardzic said.

Meanwhile, the Serbian war crimes prosecution reported significant breaktrough in investigation into allegations of post-war Kosovo's horror story of Kosovo Serbs, who were abducted, moved to Albania, killed and had their organs removed.

"A lot had been done to uncover the truth about what happened in Kosovo and north Albania in 1999...All the signs pointed to the possibility of an international organized crime ring involving many officials on the current Albanian political scene," spokesman of Belgrade's War Crimes Prosecutor spokesman Bruno Vekaric said.

Kosovo's horror tale hit the headlines earlier this year, after former chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal Carla del Ponte's released a book "The Hunt: Me and War Criminals", which includes organ theft allegations.

Del Ponte wrote that that some 400 Serbs were killed and had their organs removed during the 1998-1999 war, and this involved leaders of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, which fought Serbian government forces in a guerilla war in 1999

Vekaric comfirmed the role of former ethnic Albanian guerrilla chiefs in horrifying underground operation, while extending the list of suspects to "certain former UN officials" allegedly also involved in organ theft network.

"It is known from reliable sources that UNMIK conducted an investigation into tha fate of missing Serbs, that it was called off very abruptly, and that no-one knows the exact findings of the investigation," said Vekaric.

Belgrade expects the official response from the UNMIK on whether the probe into the missing Kosovo Serbs had ever been carried out, or if the civil administration had halted the investigation.

Similar requests were also dispached to addresses of International Red Cross, Vekaric said, adding that Albanian Prosecutor's office could play a key role in investigation, because the secretive makeshift hispital, whiuch was the scene of organ theft, has been locate in northern Albanian town of Buress.

Human Rights Watch has called for an investigation into claims that ethnic Albanians in Kosovo abducted and killed Serbs, and may have sold their organs, but Kosovo officials rejected those claims.