[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH «ALBEUROPA»} PRESS: Kosovo Still Seethes as U.N. Official Nears Exit (Washington Post, December 18, 2000)

[Wolfgang Plarre]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20014-2000Dec17?language=printer

Kosovo Still Seethes as U.N. Official Nears Exit 

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 18, 2000 ; Page A20 

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Dec. 17 -- A huge poster behind Bernard Kouchner's
desk here in Kosovo portrays three men--an ethnic Albanian, a Serb and a
Gypsy--sharing a cup of coffee above the words: "Let's talk about us;
the future starts with tolerance."
    The poster was crafted for a U.N. campaign of tolerance in Kosovo's
schools, but it is a fantasy for this Serbian province at large; it is
the kind of conversation that never occurs here, even after 18 months of
international peacekeeping and nation-building under Kouchner's
leadership as the top U.N. official in Kosovo.
    It has been a wearying and frustrating assignment for Kouchner, who
plans to resign next month; Danish Defense Minister Hans Haekkerup will
succeed him.
    For Kouchner, today was hardly different than any other over the
past year and a half. There were frantic morning phone calls from the
U.N. representative in the northern Kosovo town of Leposavic about
rioting Serbs, an overnight arson attack on the U.N. police station and
the seizure of some Belgian soldiers for seven hours at a NATO base. He
also heard from an aide in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica that
an ethnic Albanian was found shot to death in a Serbian neighborhood.
    Serbs in Leposavic, he learned, were angry about two things: the
death of a Serbian nationalist who was injured during ethnic riots in
Mitrovica nearly a year ago, and the arrest Saturday by U.N.-hired
Serbian police of a former member of a Serbian militia, who was charged
with speeding and possession of illegal communications equipment. In the
resulting riot, two Serbs reportedly were killed; the Belgrade
government blamed NATO soldiers for firing irresponsibly, while NATO
blamed the Serbs for interfering with law enforcement.
    Those reports came in before U.S. troops assigned to the NATO
peacekeeping operation here reported being shot at around lunchtime,
purportedly by ethnic Albanians. The soldiers were in the process of
blowing up a road used by ethnic Albanian militants to smuggle arms from
Kosovo into southern Serbia, where they have been challenging government
security forces. No Americans were wounded in the incident, the first
use of force against the militants since the U.S. military they promised
to seal Kosovo's eastern boundary early this month.
    There have been many ethnically inspired shootings, arsons and riots
throughout Kouchner's tenure, during which he and his U.N. colleagues
have struggled to obtain adequate financing and manpower to stabilize
Kosovo--a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic. Lacking
sufficient numbers of trained police and impartial judges, they have
failed to halt a succession of violent attacks by Kosovo Albanians on
the province's Serbs and other minorities--an ethnic cleansing in
reverse by those whom the Serb-led Yugoslav government sought to drive
from the province at gunpoint, leading to NATO military intervention and
the present U.N. administration.
    Kouchner has endured furious criticism from the Yugoslav government
and its Russian allies with each step the United Nations has taken to
help Kosovo govern itself, including municipal elections in October that
brought political moderates to power and displaced ethnic hard-liners.
And Kouchner said he and other U.N. officials here have watched with
amazement as the Western countries that fought to protect Kosovo's
majority ethnic Albanian population from the Yugoslav government last
year have rushed to embrace its newly elected leader, Vojislav
Kostunica. Kouchner said he expected more reticence until Belgrade
granted amnesty to ethnic Albanians in Serbian jails or made other
efforts to atone for its bloody repression of the Kosovo Albanians.
    But Kouchner said in an interview that he remains optimistic a
better future awaits Kosovo, the only U.N. protectorate in Europe and a
territory that is neither independent nor subject to the dictates of
Belgrade, capital of both Serbian and Yugoslavia.
    "It is a dream to make peace right now," Kouchner said when asked
what message he wanted to send president-elect George W. Bush and his
advisers, who have expressed skepticism about keeping U.S. troops in the
Balkans for a long time. "It is our common dream. But we need to be
realistic. . . . It is not possible for Serbs to have freedom of
movement at the moment [because of security risks]. . . . This is a long
run and not a sprint."
    "We need the Americans," Kouchner said. "We need the forces we have.
. . . This [peacekeeping] is a common aim for all those involved in
fighting [former Yugoslav president Slobodan] Milosevic," whose policies
of Serbian nationalism stoked animosities and led to a decade of bitter
divisions and human rights abuses. Milosevic, defeated for reelection by
Kostunica in October, was ousted in a subsequent popular uprising.
    Those who think that Kosovo's residents will be adequately protected
by the arrival of democracy in Belgrade after Kostunica's victory are
naive, Kouchner said. "I'm sorry, that's not the way it works," he said,
calling such notions disturbingly "colonial." Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo
demand independence, and their bitterness over the war remains so great
that any of their leaders who try to talk with Kostunica's government
would risk being killed by extremists, he said. "Intolerance is a . . .
political fact," not easily or quickly remedied, he said.
    Kouchner, a physician who helped found the humanitarian aid group
Doctors Without Borders, says he is leaving Kosovo because he is
restless. He unsuccessfully sought the position of U.N. high
commissioner for refugees and is now headed for an unspecified French
government assignment in Paris. His obvious empathy for human suffering
and openly emotional style have won him many supporters among Kosovo
residents, but many locals and Westerners have accused his team of being
disorganized and faulted its slow repair of utilities and other basic
services.
    Kouchner says he has made mistakes but feels the United Nations
performed better in Kosovo than in other peacekeeping assignments,
particularly because its territory and citizenry were so damaged by the
fighting here. He added that he hopes his experience will guide the
United Nations to do a better job in similar circumstances in the
future.
    The first and most important lesson to be learned from Kosovo, he
said, is that peacekeeping missions need a judicial or law-and-order
"kit" made up of trained police officers, judges and prosecutors, plus a
set of potentially draconian security laws or regulations that are
available on their arrival. This is the only way to stop criminal
behavior from flourishing in a postwar vacuum of authority, Kouchner
said.
    "We did not succeed with the police," Kouchner said, noting that
more than 50 countries contributed officers to the 4,000-member force
but that they never trained for the mission. He acknowledged that his
own staff had repeatedly spurned proposals to bring in foreigners who
could prosecute crimes impartially. His staff was "absolutely wrong," he
said, adding that Kosovo needs more such foreign judges and prosecutors
now.
    Kouchner says he has no regrets about moving as quickly as possible
to organize elections and begin handing power back to the citizens of
Kosovo. 
    After decades of authoritarian or communist rule, he said, they
needed to learn it was their own responsibility.
    With backing from the Clinton administration, Kouchner has been
pressing for additional elections soon after he departs, this time for a
Kosovo-wide parliamentary assembly. Belgrade has opposed the idea,
arguing that the balloting would make Kosovo Serbs feel even more
excluded from the political process, but Kouchner argues that if such an
election is postponed, ethnic Albanian militants will stoke new
violence.
    Kouchner says that peace will be more secure in Kosovo after new
elections are held, more jobs are created, ethnic Albanian prisoners are
freed from Serbian jails, and missing Kosovo Serbs are accounted for.
But he also says that Serbia needs to see Kosovo's majority population
not simply as terrorists but as people "like they are, normal people."

© 2000 The Washington Post


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