31 Serbs and five Roma are protesting the delays in their trial proceedings and have refused all food since Orthodox Easter on 1 May, said Nadia Younes, spokewswoman for the United Nations Interim Adminsitration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

Ms. Younes said that in response to the hunger strike, and at the urging of the UN mission, the President of the District Court of Mitrovica has rescheduled their trials, the first of which will start on June 6. Meanwhile, the hunger strikers are being cared for by four doctors to monitor their health during the ongoing strike.

A panel of judges, including Mr. Karphammar, the international judge in Mitrovica, will conduct the trial, the spokeswoman said. UNMIK will provide the district court of Mitrovica with additional security. The Department of Judicial Affairs will also ensure that ethnic Serb judges who have already been appointed are sworn in and start working as soon as possible, she added.

Ms. Younes said that yesterday and again today, UNMIK police had reported peaceful demonstrations being held in front of the detention center.

Introducing the mission's report, the head of the delegation, Ambassador Anwarul Karim Chowdhury of Bangladesh, said the Council "could not have envisaged" the enormity of the UN's tasks in Kosovo when it adopted resolution 1244 (1999), which sets out the tasks for the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

While the situation in Kosovo was "extremely complex," and every day brought "a new challenge, or a resurfacing of the one tackled earlier," UNMIK and the international peacekeeping force (KFOR) were addressing their challenge with determination, he said. But ongoing staff shortages for both civil administration and police constrained UN operations, and must be addressed with urgency, he said.

There was a gradual "return to normalcy" in Kosovo, and economic activities were slowly picking up, the Ambassador said. The mission sensed among the different ethnic communities "a clear desire to live in peace together and engage in economic reconstruction and restitution of law and order."

However, security was still a "major and continuing challenge," Ambassador Chowdhury said, noting that some violent incidents during the mission made "us comprehend better the reality of the situation."

The upcoming municipal election and the civilian and voter registration process presented a major challenge for the UN in Kosovo, the Ambassador said. He underscored that the unresolved issues of missing persons and detainees continued to impede reconciliation, bringing to the Council's attention support among the different ethnic communities for the appointment of a Special Envoy to address these matters.

Ambassador Chowdhury's statement was followed by an intensive debate, in which all members of the Security Council took part. While some delegations expressed concern about the implementation of the underlying resolution 1244, others stressed that it was important to make sure that the UN mission was properly staffed and financed.

The Council mission, which included Ambassadors from Argentina, Bangladesh, Canada, China, Jamaica, Malaysia, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, travelled throughout Kosovo from 27 to 29 April.

Dr. Kouchner said the new equipment would not only improve flight safety, but also go a long way in improving the communication and travel links between Kosovo and the outside world.

Most of the landing system has been in use since 17 April, but it only became fully operational today. ILS enables Pristina's Slatina airport to meet international standards for instrument flight, and has been approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization. The equipment, worth almost 9 million deutsche marks ($4 million), was a donation from the British Department for International Development (DFID).

Air traffic control continues to be handled by the Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom, who will hand over to Italian forces in June. Meanwhile, local air traffic controllers are being trained, according to a UN spokeswoman.

The airport currently handles about 1,000 passengers a day with 10 airlines flying regularly. A new company, Air Kosova, will be flying by the end of the month with two flights a week to Zurich. Also by the end of the month, there will be an air-taxi service with flights to Thessaloniki, Ohrid and Skopje.

The French government has donated 6 million deutsche marks ($2.8 million) towards a master plan for future development at the airport. At present, flight operations have to close at 6 p.m due to lack of staff, while lack of parking space means that Aircraft are limited to around forty-five minutes on the ground.

In a major political statement endorsing tolerance, basic rights and freedoms for all Kosovo communities, the KTC also called for perpetrators of crimes against both Albanian and Serbian communities in Kosovo to be brought to justice.

The KTC demanded that the Government of the former Republic of Yugoslavia grant immediate access for the International Committee of the Red Cross to all detention facilities in Serbia where Kosovars are held.

It also demanded that Belgrade make available to UNMIK all information related to Kosovars who went missing during the past conflict and called on the UN to appoint a special envoy for detainees and missing persons at the earliest date.

In the statement, Serb members of the KTC strongly condemned the crimes, repression and discrimination suffered by the Kosovo Albanian community, while Albanian members similarly condemned abuses against Serbs and other communities that have occurred in post-conflict Kosovo.

The KTC members expressed their serious concern for the present situation of the Serb community and minorities in Kosovo, and for the limitations on the exercise of their fundamental rights. They undertook to do their utmost to improve the situation, in cooperation with UNMIK.

The KTC called on all individuals and communities in Kosovo to refrain from the use of violence, and to solve all disputes through peaceful means.

One member, Gjergj Dedaj, of the Liberal Party of Kosovo (PLK), declined to endorse the statement.

The Victim Recovery and Identification Commission (VRIC), which will be inaugurated on Thursday, will recover, identify and dispose of the remains of bodies of war victims, in coordination with the exhumation and investigation work by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The lead agency in tracing the missing will, however, remain the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), according the press release issued by the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK).

The VRIC which will initially be funded by the International Commission on Missing Persons and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). By next year, the Kosovo Consolidated Budget should support the VRIC, the UNMIK release said.

In other developments today, the head of UNMIK, Dr. Bernard Kouchner, issued a statement deploring the murder yesterday of Mr. Ekrem Rexha, a Prizren community leader and former commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

He said the cold-blooded murder of Mr. Rexha, who he described as "an important ally for all those working for peace, tolerance and reconstruction in Kosovo," was a tragedy for Prizren and for all of the territory.

UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) police are investigating the murder and another separate incident in which three people--two men and one 10-year-old girl -- were shot dead yesterday in a family dispute in Danjane, near Prizren, a UN spokesperson said in Pristina.

In an unrelated incident, small groups of Serbs reacted angrily last night to the shooting of a child, a man and a woman in a Vitina park, the international peacekeeping force (KFOR) reported. KFOR said that 50 people gathered in protest in the town of Vrbovac, just east of Vitina, and 15 Serbs in nearby Mogila. KFOR dispatched troop reinforcements to the communities to provide a strong security presence alongside UNMIK Police.

Four men have been arrested in connection with the incident in which the child and the two adults were seriously injured when individuals fired on them with high-powered AK-47 assault rifles.

KFOR also reported that yesterday afternoon, just north of the Western Bridge in Mitrovica, a UN mini-bus was stoned by Kosovo Serbs because the driver was identified as an Albanian. KFOR French infantry and UNMIK Police combined immediately to calm the situation.

In a press release issued in Pristina, UNMIK said that the presidency of the EU in a statement last week encouraged its members to recognize the travel documents as "legal title to free movement, subject to visa regulations at the discretion of every State concerned."

UNMIK said the travel documents will be issued, beginning probably in late July or early August. Residents of Kosovo, once they have completed civil presently under way, can apply for the travel documents.

The travel documents will be issued to Kosovo residents without valid Yugoslav passports, according a UNMIK regulation signed on 30 March. The travel document, to be issued by the Central Civil Registry, does not confer nationality upon its holder and will be valid for up to 24 months from the date of issue, and can be extended or renewed.