Serbian Province of Kosovo-Metohija Kosovo-Metohija is an autonomous province within the Republic of Serbia and on the basis of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 which was adopted on June 10, 1999, it is under the interim civil and military administration of the UN. Kosovo-Metohija spans 10,849 square kilometres of the territory in the south-west of Serbia, with Pristina as its administrative, economic and cultural seat. Kosovo-Metohija consists of 29 municipalities and five districts, with seats in Pristina, Pec, Prizren, Kosovska Mitrovica      and Gnjilane. According to the 1991 census, Kosovo-Metohija has 1,956,196 inhabitants which is slightly less than 20% of the total population of Serbia.          Kosovo Issue With the arrival of international forces and the establishment of institutions of international administration in the southern Serbian province on June 10, 1999, the problem of Kosovo-Metohija has not been solved. In the past eight years, the remaining Kosovo Serbs and other non-Albanian ethnic communities have been forced from their homes while at the same time suffering the destruction of the property, graves and cultural heritage (churches and monasteries) that are symbols of the centuries-old presence of the Serbian people in this territory. The violence spurred by ethnic Albanian extremists and ethnic cleansing of the Serb population on March 17 and 18, 2004, have shown once again that the existing provincial institutions, as well as the institutions of the international administration in Kosovo-Metohija, have failed to complete their mission and have not secured a real functioning and existence of a multi-cultural society in the province. The former state union of Serbia-Montenegro, today the Republic of Serbia, was an internationally recognised state and as such, it was a member of the UN and other international organisations.          All principles and norms of those international organisations apply to the Republic of Serbia, as well as to all other states, and especially those principles and norms that establish the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the member states. These are first of all the Charter of the United Nations and the Final Act of the Conference on European Security and Cooperation (today OSCE) from Helsinki from 1975. In addition to these and other binding normative documents of international law, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the former Serbia-Montenegro (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at that time) is explicitly confirmed by the UN SC Resolution 1244, as well as in other SC resolutions, namely 1160, 1199, 1203 (all from 1998) and 1239 from 1999. In addition to basic sources of international law, borders and territorial integrity of the states that were created through the violent break-up of the former Yugoslavia are additionally guaranteed by special international legal documents and agreements, such as the Opinions of the Arbitration Committee of the Conference on Yugoslavia (Opinion no. 3 from January 11, 1992) and the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina from November 21, 1995 (Dayton/Paris Peace Accords). Future Status The future status of Kosovo-Metohija can be defined only in the frameworks of suitable principles and norms of the UN and other international organisations, while respecting the constitutional order of the Republic of Serbia. The form and content of that solution should satisfy the state interests of the Republic of Serbia, as well as the interests of ethnic-Albanians in Kosovo-Metohija, Serbs in the province and all other groups in Kosovo-Metohija. Such an inclusive aim is imaginable only in agreement and a compromise solution for the future status of Kosovo-Metohija. In that sense, full political will is being directed towards finding concrete and realisable forms of a stable and lasting solution for Kosovo-Metohija, in which the legitimate interests of ethnic-Albanians in the province must be taken fully into account.        The future status of Kosovo-Metohija must provide respect of human rights of members of national communities regardless of whether they make up a majority or minority of the population in the province, and must especially provide the right to safe living conditions and personal and property security, just and efficient judiciary, undisturbed property rights, free expression of political, religious, cultural and other personal beliefs, right to return and execution of public functions, as well as all other rights listed in charters of the Council of Europe that the Republic of Serbia signed and ratified. All these rights are an integral part of the standards that Kosovo-Metohija should fulfill simultaneously with the talks on its future status. Any attempt at imposing a solution which aims at practically legalizing the division of the Republic of Serbia by seizure of a part of its territory would present not just legal violence against a democratic country, but also violence against international law itself. There is no doubt that it would be an unheard of case in international law and the practice of world organisations, and also a dangerous precedent with unforeseeable long-term consequences for international order in general.