"Only if democratic standards are achieved in Kosovo, will the Security Council make a decision as to whether it is possible to begin discussing its future status," Mr. Denisov said. His statement was circulated on Friday by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Denisov said that the outburst of ethnic violence provoked by extremists in Kosovo (Serbia and Montenegro) in March primarily against Kosovo Serbs, seriously damaged the process of normalizing the situation in the province and that it disrupted schedule for establishing democratic standards, set for Kosovo by the international community.
Mr. Denisov said Russia "regards these events as a deliberate attempt to ethnically cleanse the non-Albanian population in Kosovo." Russia is convinced that nobody should be allowed to profit or achieve political goals using force, and that the situation in the province requires unconditional implementation of the UN Security Council resolution 1244.
Moscow is sure that the progress of the provisional bodies of self-government in Kosovo is still of a limited nature, especially as far as the fulfillment of the plan to implement the Kosovo standards. Until now, about 2,400 people could not return to their houses after the wave of violence in March. Medical care facilities which serve patients from the minority population, above all in Kosovo-Polje (Pristina district) were destroyed and have not been restored.
"The return process has stopped, and the key multiethnic principle does not work on the provincial level like it works on the municipal level where the majority of Kosovo Albanians live," Mr. Denisov pointed out.
He also stressed that "the rights of the minorities, above all the Kosovo Serbs, remain trampled. The non-Albanian communities in Kosovo are more isolated today than in any period of the last three years."
Mr. Denisov said that Russia was ready to closely interact with the new head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Soren Jessen-Petersen, to change the situation as determined in the Security Council resolution 1244.
