Kermabon: EULEX mission “technical”

BELGRADE -- EULEX Chief Yves de Kermabon says that EULEX is a technical mission and has nothing to do with Kosovo’s status.

Kermabon: EULEX mission “technical”

BELGRADE -- EULEX Chief Yves de Kermabon says that EULEX is a technical mission and has nothing to do with Kosovo’s status.

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Serbian officials claimed that the technical agreement was a “test balloon” for a political agreement that would lead to the full deployment of the EU mission throughout Kosovo.

Kermabon, however, said that EULEX was a technical mission, and that it had nothing to do with status or political circumstances.

“The goal of the agreement, after the UN secretary general proposed UNMIK reconfiguration, is to hand over some equipment to EULEX,” he said.

“Because of that, we can be very precise and say that it is not a political agreement nor is it tied to Kosovo’s status, and is only about technical equipment that EULEX is taking over,” the EULEX chief explained.

He said that the mission has been demonized to the Kosovo Serbs, and that that was why they opposed it, though he could not specify when the mission would be deployed throughout the province.

“We need time to set everything up, the process will begin in the coming weeks, and we need time because we have to deploy 2,000 international experts, and that will take us three to four months,” he said.

“At this moment in time, we will not be fully deployed realistically, because there could be problems in some areas and we will have to work slowly there, step by step, because I do not want to force people to accept EULEX,” Kermabon told B92.