UNMIK: Kosovo is country "stuck in the middle"

UNMIK: Kosovo is country "stuck in the middle"

 

25 April 2011 - Issue : 932

 

The head of the United Nations mission (UNMIK) in Pristina has warned the international community not to repeat in Libya the mistakes made in the armed intervention in Kosovo.

In an interview for the German Press Agency dpa, Lamberto Zannier called for an exit strategy, recalling that the UN and NATO were left ruling and policing Kosovo once hostilities ended after 78 days almost ten years ago.

In Kosovo "there was no clear strategy," with decisions on the key status question "being constantly postponed in the spirit of 'we'll see,'" Zannier said.

"Today, we are still 'seeing'." "The Kosovars assumed that the international community would have, in some way or another, de facto recognized the events, but we have seen a different result," Zannier was quoted as saying.

A large part of the international community has sided with Serbia, among them Russia, China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

"With the declaration of independence, Kosovo set out on an autonomous path, but it has not managed to go the whole way, it is still stuck in the middle," Zannier observed. Commenting on the Council of Europe report that accuses Prime Minister Hashim Thaci of having directed organ-trafficking, drug and arms smuggling operations over the past decade, under the eyes of UNMIK and the rest of the international community, Zannier said that "things that are not written" in the report but which are known could lead to a reopening of the case.

Zannier said UNMIK had collected some evidence from witnesses and passed them on to the UN tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which could not substantiate the allegations, amid suspicions that key witnesses were intimidated into silence.

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/106163.php