During talks with Joint Council chairman Dragan Crnogorac and the representative of the Serb minority in the Croatian parliament, Vojislav Stanimirovic, members of the multiethnic delegation of the Kosovo Assembly were interested in the regulation of minority rights in the Danube region, the functioning of the police, the conduct of elections, and ways of resolving ethnically-motivated incidents.
"Kosovo is now in the final stage of status definition. Croatia's experience with the peaceful reintegration of its territory may be helpful because the UN mission in the Danube region was one of the most successful in the world," the head of the Kosovo delegation, Naim Maloku, told reporters after the meeting.
Maloku said that Committee delegates had had a similar meeting in Macedonia.
Stanimirovic said that the Kosovo Assembly delegation was also interested in the current problems of the Serb minority in Croatia, among which he cited the restitution of housing and the right to pension benefits. "These issues definitely have to be settled before Croatia joins the EU," he said.
Commenting on the proposal for the status of Kosovo put forward by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari, Stanimirovic said that it guaranteed the Kosovo Serbs their rights and their ties with Serbia, comparing it with the so-called Z-4 plan that had been proposed in Croatia in 1995.
In his opinion, the rejection by Croatian Serb wartime leaders of the Z-4 plan, which gave the Serbs in Croatia wide autonomy, was "a catastrophic move".