Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Ambassador Sannino, the United States supports your leadership of the OSCE Mission to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and we warmly welcome your participation in today's meeting.

We found your review today of developments within Yugoslavia and the Mission's activities to be an extremely useful overview. Like you, we believe we should not underestimate the extent to which Milosevic's authoritarian rule froze the development of democratic institutions and the rule of law and a market economy in Yugoslavia. The Mission has a great deal of work ahead of it, but its organization and your skills should have us meet that challenge.

There are several points from your presentation and the papers you have provided us that I would like to comment on.

We agree with you that southern Serbia is a clear political priority that merits significant ongoing attention. We continue to support the efforts of Belgrade authorities to seek a peaceful political solution to the problem pursuant to the plan developed by Serb Deputy Prime Minister Covic.

We believe that your Mission should play a leading role in helping implement confidence-building measures there, including through democratization, media, and police training programs.

It is our understanding that Mr. Covic, who has been authorized to speak for Belgrade authorities on issues related to southern Serbia, has welcomed such an OSCE role. We support proceeding with the package of such programs that you and your Mission have proposed.

On police training in particular, we urge that a project to train Albanian police recruits for service in southern Serbia be put immediately upon a fast track, and that the OSCE FRY Mission coordinate an OSCE police experts team to conduct a needs assessment as soon as feasible. We further urge that we use the police training experience at the Kosovo Police School as a model in our efforts to develop a plan to address the immediate situation in the Presevo region.

We welcome your thoughts about Montenegro, and your assessment that there are potentially destabilizing consequences to unilateral moves toward independence.

The position of the United States Government is very clear: we support a democratic Montenegro within a democratic Yugoslavia. We look forward to ODIHR's robust observation of the April 22 elections, and we urge that any change to Montenegro's status within the FRY come as the result of an open, democratic, mutually acceptable process of dialogue and consultations, among the two republics and the FRY.

We believe the OSCE, including your Mission, can and should help facilitate that process. We also believe that the OSCE should take further steps to make clear that it continues to consider Montenegro as a constituent republic within Yugoslavia.

One important step you could make would be to visit Montenegro prior to April 22 to demonstrate by your physical presence that the Mission that you lead includes Montenegro within its area of interest.

On Kosovo, we ask you to continue to help encourage Belgrade to play a constructive role, including offering its explicit encouragement of Kosovar Serb participation in voter registration and in future municipal by-elections and Kosovo-wide elections to be held later this year.

Like others who have come before me, I will join my Swedish colleague speaking on behalf of the EU with respect to Mr. Kastrati’s release.

Mr. Ambassador, thank you again for coming to Vienna and making your presentation. You have our full support and we will look forward to further progress from Belgrade under your leadership.

Thank you.