NATO, Serbia-Montenegro agree to avoid Kosovo instability

NATO and Serbia-Montenegro signed here on Monday an agreement to facilitate speedy and effective action to prevent massive riots of last year in Kosovo from reoccurring.

"NATO will not allow anything like that to happen again. NATO is committed to the observation of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, human rights of the Serb minority and protection of Serbian churches and monasteries," Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said after his meeting with NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Scheffer and Draskovic signed the agreement on ground lines of communication through Serbia-Montenegro's territory for NATO troops in the event that these forces needed to intervene in the region.

The NATO chief said that NATO-led Kosovo peace-keeping force would remain in Kosovo to protect all citizens in the province, including the majority Albanians and minority Serbs.

"Nobody wants the March 17 violence to reoccur and NATO will do all in its power to prevent that," Scheffer said, adding that any kind of volatile speeches that might provoke conflicts would have to be avoided and that this applied to all sides.

As the assessment of standards in Kosovo was under way, Scheffer said that NATO wanted to see Kosovo Serbs take part in it and that Belgrade and Pristina should be ready for a mature dialogue.

Draskovic said that despite difficult and tragic conditions for the Serbs, Serbia-Montenegro had shown the greatest level of readiness for dialogue, offering the more than autonomy, less than independence formula.

Earlier on Monday, Scheffer told Serbia-Montenegro President Svetozar Marovic that former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic must be arrested and extradited to The Hague international tribunal.

"Mladic is an obstacle on Serbia-Montenegro's path toward Euro- Atlantic integrations, an obstacle which we cannot bypass," Scheffer said.

Source: Xinhua