New excavations for mass cemetery in Serbia

Members of Kosovo's dialogue group for missing persons with Serbia have said teams assigned from Kosovo are working and looking at several locations in the District of Serbia, to the country called Kizevac, for mass cemetery.

Arsim Gerjaliu, director of the Institute of Legal Medicine and member of the Kosovo Dialogue Group for Missing Persons with Serbia, has told Radio Free Europe that by the beginning of the week a team from Kosovo is doing research in the country called Kizevac in Serbia. He said that this country has been digging for four years from time to time.

We've been working in the Kizevac mine for four years, but we know that in 20 years, mine waste and stones have been dumped and relief has changed. We're constantly having a witness problem because of changing relief, but in the places you're showing them, we're digging. We're going to stay at least three weeks running and changing teams and depending on the need, we're going to stay further”, Gerjaliu said.

Co-operation with authorities in Serbia on the issue of the found, Gerjaliu has been expressed, continues at the same pace.

“We have been co-operating with working groups with Serbia and this co-operation has never been halted, despite political shifts in both countries, because all work is based on humanitarian issue”.

“When, as far as other issues [political dialogue on Kosovo] are concerned, there are other organs, which decide even though the issue of the missing should not be neglected, but the normal one should be given a special priority because actually 20 years have passed and we know very well that the families of the missing have begun to leave this world and simply require a greater job update”, Gerjaliu stressed.

In the first six months of this year, Serbia has still had no case of identification and repatriation of the mortary remains of Kosovo's missing persons.

Government Commission officials for missing persons have said that work and communication between state delegations on the issue of missing persons from both countries is continuing.

Ahmet Gajchev, chairman of the Co-ordinating Council of Familys of Undiscovered Persons in Kosovo, speaking of Radio Free Europe, has stressed that in Serbia there are mass cemeteries for which research should be done.

Gajchev has said that without international pressure, Serbia will never tell about the fate of missing persons.

“Without a major pressure on the international factor, means the Council of Europe, and the Security Council, Serbia will not tell the cases because 1200 people from Kosovo have sent them alive to Prokuple and there are recorded who they are and distributed. It means everyone has gone alive until Serbia”.

I said there are 1200, whose fate is not yet known, and only military and police structures know that. They know which direction they've been sent to and where those people are”, Gajchev said.

Grejchev also said this issue since the end of the war has been required to be discussed in the highest international instance.

Otherwise, for cemetery allegedly buried persons killed during the war by Serbian forces, excavations have continued in Kosovo as well. Last week, on the outskirts of the Podujevo municipality, a cemetery was opened where a person's morto remains were found.

Authorities said the same location has completed excavations, as there are no indicators for more persons' mortore remains.

More than 13 thousand and 500 are estimated to be the number of persons killed and missing during the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo. These figures were published by the Humanitarian Law Fund, which has usually been exploited by institutions and other relevant instances.

Of these victims, 76 percent are believed to be civilians. Meanwhile, in ethnic terms, 10,000 and 794 are Albanians, two thousand and 197 Serbs, while others belong to other ethnic affiliations. Another plague of war is about 1,000 and 600 people found.