"All officials I met with in Kosovo assured me that a significant progress had been reached in the human rights situation, that the region moved ahead along the way of implementing the international norms and the issue of the status is in sight. However, these optimistic statements were not confirmed by our personal observations," Kosachev stated.
He said, the Russian parliamentary delegation made a random visit to the town of Grachanitsa, located nine kilometers from Prishtina. Local residents stated categorically that there was no significant progress in the situation with human rights in Kosovo. They claimed that they had been avoiding going to Prishtina for the last several years due to personal safety concerns and that they did not see any reason to send their representatives to participate in the work of local administration in Kosovo," the chairman of the State Duma Committee stressed.
"We are far from making final conclusions, although it is quite obvious that it would be counterproductive to attempt to establish certain deadlines for determination of Kosovo status, as some Russian partners in the Contact Group do," Kosachev underlined.
According to the Russian parliamentarian, the determination of the status without implementation of international norms pushes the Kosovo problem "under the carpet," which might lead to the repetition of the tragedy that occurred in Marsh last year when the southern province of Serbia experienced a surge of violence on the part of Albanian population toward other ethnic groups.
