Odalovic: I informed Sorensen about all issues regarding missing persons, he has not responded

The President of the Serbian Government’s Commission on Missing Persons, Veljko Odalovic, told Kosovo Online that he had sent a letter to the new EU mediator in the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, Peter Sorensen, informing him about all the challenges currently facing the process of identifying and exhuming missing persons in Kosovo, but he has not received any response.

"After Lajcak's departure, when I asked him to brief Sorensen on all these issues and realized that he had not done so, I wrote a letter to Mr. Sorensen, pointing out everything I have been talking about and highlighting a potential problem. I hope that, from the meetings he is set to hold in Belgrade and Pristina, he will develop a new platform where he will define priorities," Odalovic stated.

Although he has not yet received a response from the new EU mediator, he expects to hear from him during Sorensen's first visit to Belgrade.

"I hope that this upcoming visit to Belgrade will be an opportunity for us to have a very open discussion on this topic and present the facts. I will reiterate that we have never hidden any facts from Mr. Lajcak or anyone else, nor have we failed to present them transparently. We will present them to Sorensen as well and demand that the dialogue he is leading, and the issue he is addressing, remain within the framework of what has been written and agreed upon, there is no new framework," Odalovic emphasized.

He specifies that the issue of missing persons in Kosovo is "a very sensitive and complex matter that has been further complicated in Brussels."

"Two years ago, when the Declaration on Missing Persons was agreed upon between President Vucic and Albin Kurti, I had hoped that this would be a new boost to the process, allowing us to provide families, who rightfully expect answers, something more than what we had been able to offer before. However, for five years, the process in Brussels has been literally frozen, paralyzed, due to Pristina’s stance and Albin Kurti’s approach, as he does not see the dialogue as a forum for discussing any issue, including missing persons, with Belgrade," Odalovic warned.

He expresses confidence that the new EU mediator will accomplish more than his predecessor, Miroslav Lajcak.

"I told Miroslav Lajcak multiple times: ‘I don’t doubt that you wanted to help, but if you didn’t understand the situation, it is because you didn’t have support.’ And that is why his mission regarding missing persons ultimately failed. We made no progress, despite his promises that we would be able to move forward based on certain interpretative statements and clarifications of contentious issues. But clearly, he either lacked the strength to act, I will not say that he did not want to do it, and that is now the point of contention at the very start of Sorensen’s mandate regarding missing persons," Odalovic noted.

He explains that the key issue lies in the interpretation of the Declaration on Missing Persons, which called for the formation of a joint EU-level commission comprising representatives from Belgrade, Pristina, and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

According to Odalovic, this body was meant to serve as an "auxiliary mechanism" to support the Working Group, which remains the sole mechanism for resolving the issue of missing persons.
"And that is where the dispute lies. Pristina, backed by certain international actors, has interpreted this as the creation of a new body intended to replace the Working Group, something that is absolutely unacceptable to us. Moreover, this is not stated anywhere in the Declaration or any other document. The reality is that Pristina simply does not want the Working Group because it was established under the auspices of the UN Secretary-General’s special representative, and anything related to the UN is something Pristina neither wants nor acknowledges as a legitimate mechanism," Odalovic explained.

He emphasizes that all previous governments in Pristina, up until Albin Kurti’s administration, had cooperated in addressing the issue of missing persons, resulting in the clarification of the fate of 1,800 missing individuals.

"Kurti does not allow our colleagues from Pristina, whom we regularly meet with through another mechanism within the Berlin Process, to convene within the Working Group. That is something Sorensen and the entire international community that supports this process must recognize and restore the dialogue to the framework in which it was originally intended to function, based on clearly established rules," Odalovic concluded.