UN plan for Kosovo faces a rocky future

International Herald Tribune



UN plan for Kosovo faces a rocky future



By Nicholas Wood



Thursday, March 8, 2007



VITINA, Kosovo: Hajriz Jakupi, a former guerrilla who fought the Serbs, is not happy with the international proposal that is meant to bring lasting peace to this region, even though Kosovo would get the trappings of a state — a flag, an army and the right to seek international recognition.



It is the quid pro quo that angers Jakupi: that the relatively few Serbs living in Kosovo would have control over expanded areas that would include Albanian villages, including his own, which lies just outside this town.



"It's an offense," Jakupi said, raising his voice. "It is our territory, it is our land." He was speaking of the ethnic Albanians who would become a minority in the municipality he comes from but are a large majority overall in Kosovo.



How fighters like Jakupi behave in the next months will be crucial to the success of the UN-designed plan. For now, he said, he will express his opposition "in a peaceful manner."



Serbian leaders rejected the UN plan Thursday while ethnic Albanians accepted it, diminishing hopes of a compromise before the proposal reaches the UN Security Council, The Associated Press reported from Belgrade. Ethnic Albanian and Serbian leaders held separate meetings in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, and in Belgrade to discuss the amended proposal drafted by the chief UN envoy, Martti Ahtisaari.



The calculation of the United Nations was that people like Jakupi and his colleagues in the Kosovo Liberation Army would accept the deal, since it gives the Albanian population considerable independence, although with a dose of international supervision.



If they do so, the United Nations will hope to scale back a multibillion-dollar exercise that it has been engaged in for nearly eight years, tying down thousands of peacekeeping troops. The proposals, which have taken more than a year to draw up, were expected to go to the UN Security Council for a vote by June.



But there are worries that things could go wrong, and not only among people like Jakupi who have been quick to fight before. Jakupi, 35, leads a group of former fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army, which waged an insurgency against Serbian security forces from 1997 to 1999, a conflict that took 10,000 lives and ultimately pushed NATO to intervene. Some of his colleagues were at the center of two other insurgencies, in Macedonia and southern Serbia, in 2001.



And Serbia is loath to lose Kosovo, a province it has controlled for most of the 20th century and regards as central to its history and identity. Many Serbs in Kosovo are weighing whether to move out. There also are worries that Serbia will simply hold on to the part of Kosovo where Serbs are a majority, splitting the province and not recognizing the new arrangements.



A senior UN official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said of the Serbs: "My fear is that they would consider some kind of partition. That would cause great concern."



The United Nations and NATO have never been able to exert dominance in that northern region. Yet the authorities say little has been done to prevent such a partition within Kosovo.



That could provoke renewed conflict, senior UN officials and regional analysts warned, from armed ethnic Albanians determined to retain Kosovo's current boundaries.



"If independence is not recognized, I think people will take up arms," Jakupi said. "It is the minimum we can accept. This is what our heroes gave their lives for in the war."



Even if things go well, international and local officials said ethnic divisions would not permit the quick exit of peacekeepers and administrators that the international community hopes for.



Europe and the United States will need to act as arbitrators in a divided and economically backward region for years, according to this view, having some oversight over the new government and an ability to amend laws and dismiss public officials.



Kosovo has been run by the United Nations since June 1999, after a 78-day NATO-led bombing campaign forced out the Serbian security forces who had been accused of committing atrocities against ethnic Albanians.



Years later there is little doubt among UN officials that their tenure should come to an end, allowing the European Union to take the lead (although with far fewer responsibilities than the United Nations had) and with most decision-making powers in the hands of a new Albanian-led government.



Ethnic Albanians are impatient to control their affairs and have taken their anger out on UN soldiers. Protests are frequent in Pristina, most recently on Saturday, when several thousand people marched by the UN headquarters shouting "UN out."



Under the proposals drafted by Ahtisaari, the UN would be replaced by a European Union-led mission with limited powers and Kosovo would enjoy considerable autonomy.



Controls would be put in place to protect minorities. Serbian areas would control their own affairs in health and education in five new municipalities that could get financing from the Serbian government. The European Commission has allocated €120 million, or nearly $160 million, over three years to help minority communities.



For the Serbs, "this is attractive, if they engage," said Torbjorn Sohlstrom, the EU official in charge of planning for the next administration.



But Serbia's record of engagement in Kosovo suggests that ordinary Serbs may not engage as EU officials might wish.



For six years Belgrade has pressured Serbs living in Kosovo not to cooperate with international or Albanian institutions in Kosovo, often by docking pay or cutting pensions. Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of Serbia, a nationalist, has said his government will never recognize an independent Kosovo.



"It will be very hard to implement if the Serbian government is against it," said Oliver Ivanovic, one of a handful of Serbian politicians who take part in Kosovo's institutions, dominated by ethnic Albanians.



Alex Anderson, director of the International Crisis Group, a political research group active in the Balkans, said, "If you have Belgrade trying to undermine it, the Albanians may regard the status settlement as a big burden."



Others worry about how the proposals will be carried out. Kim Vetting, an adviser on security issues with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which works alongside the UN mission here, said: "Here we are just a few months from settlement day and we don't know how or what to do. How do we maintain control there?"

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