Drecun: Community of Municipalities hard to achieve without strong Western pressure

BELGRADE - The head of the Serbian parliamentary committee on Kosovo-Metohija Milovan Drecun says the establishment of a Community of Serb Municipalities will be very difficult to achieve without strong Western pressure on Pristina.

Belgrade insists on an agreement being reached, and that is why a draft statute of the Community has been made as the most important point for progress in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Drecun told Tanjug on Wednesday.

He said Pristina's PM Albin Kurti was trying to avoid the establishment of the Community at all costs, through political manipulations and unexpected moves.

Instead of being punished for his refusal to form the Community, Kurti has been rewarded with the launch of the procedure for the so-called Kosovo's admission to the Council of Europe and with a recognition of elections held in the north of Kosovo-Metohija, Drecun said.

He also said the adoption of a declaration on missing persons was a positive step in Belgrade-Pristina relations but that technical details were yet to be defined.

He added that he had doubts about Pristina's readiness to allow excavations on nine locations that were suspected burial sites of Serbs.

One of the key issues is whether international organisations such as the OSCE and KFOR will provide the documentation they have to help shed light on the fates of missing persons, Drecun said.

"To me, the most important question is whether the Republic of Albania - which has no such obligation under the declaration - will hand over documentation on illegal detentions, because it is evident that its intelligence service knew of all that," Drecun said.