Letter to the Chairman of the Committee
from the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
EULEX
Thank you for your letter of 19 January requesting
clarification on the role of the EU's policing and rule of law
mission in Kosovo, EULEX.
As I told the Committee on 10 December, there
is no contradiction between the UK's support for Kosovo's independence,
in accordance with Ahtisaari's Comprehensive Settlement Proposal
(CSP), and the role of EULEX, which was foreseen in the CSP.
EULEX became operational throughout Kosovo on
9 December 2008, at the invitation of the Kosovan government.
The Serbian government also expressed its support for the deployment.
The mission currently has 2248 staff working throughout Kosovo,
including in the Serb-majority areas. Its work to strengthen the
rule of law is to the benefit of all Kosovo's communities.
EULEX's mandate is set out in Joint Action 2008/
124/CFSP, dated 4 February 2008. It operates to the same remit
in all parts of Kosovo: providing mentoring and training to police,
customs, prosecutors and the judiciary. It also retains some executive
authority in the areas of maintaining public order and combating
organised crime. While EULEX operates within the overall framework
of the United Nations, which itself takes a status neutral approach,
the Joint Action and planning documents do not specify or imply
that EULEX is status neutral.
Since EULEX's deployment, UNMIK has relinquished
its leading role in the field of rule of law in Kosovo and UNMIK
is reviewing its presence in Kosovo in the light of this deployment.
The UN Secretary General's report on Kosovo of 24 November 2008
stated that further discussions would be required on certain transitional
arrangements in areas of particular concern to Kosovan Serbs.
The report made clear that the implementation of these transitional
arrangements would be on the basis of continuous consultation
and co-ordination with the authorities in Pristina, as well as
consultations with Belgrade. These discussions, in which EULEX
is closely involved, are underway and have yet to be concluded.
I am confident that nothing in any of these
transitional arrangements, nor their implementation, will undermine
Kosovo's territorial integrity or unitary nature. I remain a strong
advocate of Kosovo's independence and would not support any activity
that I believed would undermine that.
10 February 2009
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