http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics-article.php?yyyy=2007&mm=08&dd=02&nav_category=93&nav_id=42786
"Serbia is not buying Albanian houses" 2 August 2007 | 13:03 | Source: B92 *KOSOVSKA MITROVICA -- Serbs in Kosovo have denied claims the government in Belgrade was buying Albanian property in northern Kosovska Mitrovica. * Vice President of the Kosovo and Metohija Coordinating Center Momir Kasalović spoke to B92 and denied Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku’s recent claims that the Serbian government was buying Albanian houses in the area. Ceku on the same occasion called on his compatriots in the majority-Serb part of the town for “a little more patience until the status solution”. “Ceku’s statement comes out of plain frustration and I have not dwelled on it long,” Kasalović said. “I can say taking full responsibility for my statements that the Serbian government is not behind any real estate transactions. The government does not deal in that, and if there are such deals, then they are regular, normal ones,” Kasalović explained. Oliver Ivanović of the Serb List for Kosovo said he was surprised by the attention the sale of Albanian houses in northern Kosovska Mitrovica generated. “In all these years, Ceku never attempted to assess whether the ethnic structure in Kosovo was changing, especially in southern Kosovoska Mitrovica,“ Ivanović said. “Some 2,500 Serbs used to live there, and as far as I know the number of those who did not sell their property there is very small.” “I call that selling under pressure because they were never given any opportunity to return to their homes, instead conducting the transactions via middlemen,” Ivanović concluded. In the past eight years, ethnic Albanians reportedly sold more than 200 real estate units in northern Kosovska Mitrovica.
