BELGRADE, November 7 (RIA Novosti) - The future of the contested Serbian province of Kosovo should be determined through negotiations between the provincial authorities and those of Serbia-Montenegro and not by international bodies, the Russian Foreign Minister said Monday during a visit to the republic's capital, Belgrade.
"A final decision as to Kosovo's status mustn't be imposed from the outside, but can only result from direct agreements between Belgrade and Pristina. It is necessary, however, that Belgrade specify its approaches to solving the issue," Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference after talks with his Serbian counterpart, Vuk Draskovic.
Lavrov said the United Nations, which has been administering Kosovo in association with NATO since 1999, should be more pro-active in having the province's authorities comply with established international standards dealing with local self-government, security and freedom of travel in the province.
He stressed the need to carry on with the talks on compliance in parallel with UN-brokered Kosovo status negotiations, expected to start later this month. Kosovo's ethnic Albanians insist on independence from Serbia whereas Belgrade wants to keep at least formal control over the province.
Lavrov also called for improvements to the election monitoring procedures used by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
"Special attention in reforming the OSCE should be paid to the methods of election monitoring. There are quite a lot of unclear, opaque procedures here, and it is highly important that the situation be changed," he said.
Lavrov said Russia had been consistently pushing for the OSCE monitoring elections in conjunction not just with bodies of the Council of Europe and the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, but with agencies representing sovereign states as well.
"Such interaction during [Sunday's] polls in Azerbaijan became one of the first signs of movement in that direction," he said, calling against using double standards and politicizing the process.
