PUBLIC HEARING: KOSOVO: FIVE YEARS ON Tuesday, 25 January 2005, 15.00-18.30

Brief biographies of the speakers

Mr. Misha Glenny is an award-winning journalist and historian who has covered Eastern Europe and the Balkans since the mid-1980s. He has lectured on these subjects at universities throughout the United States and Europe, and is the author of three books, most recently "The Balkans: Nationalism, War and The Great Powers: 1804-1999" published by Granta Books. Misha Glenny was recently appointed Managing Director of SEE Change 2004, a UK based charity that supports economic and political reforms in South Eastern Europe.

Professor Jacques Rupnik is Director of Research at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI) in Paris and professor at the College of Europe Bruges- Warsaw. He was Executive Director of the International Commission for the Balkans at the "Carnegie Endowment for International Peace". He was the drafter of the Commission's report "Unfinished Peace" (1996). In 1999- 2000 he was a member of the International Independent Commission on Kosovo whose report was published by Oxford University Press. He is the author of several books and articles including "International Perspective in the Balkans" (2003) and the "Kosovo Report. Conflict, International Response, Lesson Learned" (2000). Most recently he contributed to Chaillot Paper n. 70 on the Western Balkans published by the EU Institute for Security Studies.

Dr. Nicholas Whyte co-ordinates the International Crisis Group's field research, analysis, policy prescription and advocacy activities in relation to the Balkans, Moldova and the Caucasus. He is responsible for 18 staff in five field offices, publishing fifteen to twenty in-depth reports every year and advocating recommendations to high-level policymakers in Europe and America. The Europe program includes analysis of the post-conflict situations in the Balkans, including the international protectorates in Bosnia and Kosovo, and also policy proposals for the frozen conflicts in Moldova (Transdniestria), Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and Armenia/Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh).

Mr. Skender Hyseni is the Principal Advisor to the President of Kosovo. Since the foundation in 1989, Mr. Hyseni has been a member of the Democratic League of Kosovo (DLK) and was invited to work as a journalist and translator at the Kosova Information Center. In 1993 he co-founded and became an editor of the "Kosova Daily Report", a news bulletin in English, where he also edited several books and editions on Kosovo's modern history and political situation. After the elections for the President of the Parliament of the Republic of Kosova in 1992, Mr. Hyseni became a close aide to the elected president Dr. Ibrahim Rugova. After the 2001 election of Dr. Rugova as President of Kosovo and his re-election in 2004, Mr. Hyseni was appointed Principal Political Advisor to the President of Kosovo.

Dr Nebojsha Covic is the President of the Coordination Center for Kosovo and Metohia in the Council of Ministers of Serbia and Montenegro. In 1992 Mr. Covic became vice-president of the Executive board of Belgrade City Assembly for economy and finance and in the same period delegate in the Republic Assembly for two terms. Since its foundation in 1997, he was the first President of Democratic Alternative, and elected delegate in the Federal Assembly since the year 2000. Dr. Covic has been Deputy Prime Minister of the Government of the Republic of Serbia since 2001.

Mr. Jessen-Petersen is the Special Representative for the U.N. Secretary General in Kosovo and head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). He has enjoyed a long and distinguished career as an international civil servant, working with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Secretariat and most recently the European Union. He has also served as the European Union Special Representative in Skopje from February to June 2004. In this post he was responsible for establishing and maintaining close contact between the European Union and the Government of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), as well as the other parties involved in the peace process.