Rambouillet Peace Conference - Hawaii Pacific University

Boshkovich 61
same manner as the Kosovo‘s Assembly, and that in the case of the reestablishment of
municipals‘ borders besides the consensus of the Assembly of Kosovo and authorities of
municipals involved in particular case add ―with acceptance of the people assembly of
Republic of Serbia‖. As usually, none of these suggestions were accepted. 150
Article IX, which discussed the representation of Kosovo in Federal and Republic
institutions was also problematic for the Serbian delegation. The reason for this was that
this article stated that this representation was the possibility but not the obligation. Serbs
pushed for changing of this to an obligation, but the Contact Group did not accept this
idea as well.
As mentioned, Chapter 2 (regarding security) was not presented until 18/19
February (even if the Conference commenced on February 6th), so actors moved to the
Chapter 3 titled ―The Conducting and Supervising of Elections‖. Serbs found most of the
decrees acceptable from the Paragraph I with the exception for the role of the OSCE. The
Serbian delegation thought that it was acceptable that the OSCE assists with conducting
of census of citizens of Kosovo (actually that would be the only way since Albanians
refused for many years to participate in census), as well as to assist in creation of a free
and fair atmosphere for carrying out of the elections, but they found the idea that OSCE
should carry out the elections itself unacceptable. Nevertheless, in the final text of the
Agreement Serbian objections were not implemented. That was probably not a wise
decision by the negotiators. Of course all the countries of the world would find it
inappropriate that someone else conduct elections for them. Negotiators could instead
insist on supervision of the elections by the OSCE just to make sure that there is not any
150 Ibid, 134.