POLITICS-KOSOVO: UN Chief Pushes for Role in Crisis

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 1999 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stepped up his bid for UN mediation in the Kosovo crisis Wednesday, three weeks after the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing of Yugoslavia left the world body on the sidelines.

Annan’s closed-door negotiations in Brussels leaders of the European Union (EU) Council did not yield any immediate results, however, and he warned that the diplomatic process was “delicate” and would be kept secret.

“You have to bear with me, that some of these things have to be done away from the cameras,” Annan said after meeting EU leaders Wednesday night. But he added that negotiations were underway, including “a lot of intensive discussions with the Russians…to try to get the Yugoslav authorities to respond, to engage.”

The UN’s role in the crisis has been clearly strengthened since last Friday when Annan called on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to stop expelling ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.

UN officials were now chafing at the efforts to keep the world body’s role limited and some of the proposals being discussed – including that of a UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo – would give the United Nations the role of guarantor of any peace process.

This is a remarkable change since Mar. 24, when NATO began its air offensive against Yugoslavia without the explicit approval of the the 15-nation Security Council, where Belgrade’s main ally Russia, holds veto power.

Earlier Wednesday, Moscow threatened to question the legality of the non-UN-approved strikes at the International Court of Justice.

For several weeks, Annan made it clear that the UN role would mainly be humanitarian, while the diplomatic effort would be led by the ‘Contact Group’ comprised of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia.

As UN spokesman Fred Eckhard put it, Annan had “no intention of jumping into a crisis in which he has no useful role to play.”

Now, Annan has made a role for himself. Last Friday, he urged Milosevic to end the crackdown in Kosovo, and described his effort this week as helping “to offer a ladder to President Milosevic if he wanted to settle.”

Annan’s proposal to Milosevic was that he would seek an end to NATO’s aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia once five conditions were met by Belgrade. These were:

– An end to the “intimidation and expulsion” of the Kosovars.

– The withdrawal of Yugoslav military and paramilitary forces from Kosovo.

– The return of all refugees.

– The deployment of an international military force.

– International verification of Belgrade’s compliance.

So far, the Yugoslav president has not responded to Annan’s letter or to his peace overture in general. But a German proposal made public Wednesday, combined with Belgrade’s offers for a halt in fighting, convinced some UN diplomats that the time was right for a deal.

The German deal notably did not include the largest stumbling block of previous proposals: an insistence that Belgrade must accept a NATO-based force to keep the peace in Kosovo.

Instead, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder proposed that a UN force could be deployed.

The German proposal also insisted that both the Yugoslav government and the separatist Kosovar Liberation Army (KLA) cease military activities while Annan, so far, has kept the pressure only on Belgrade.

Whether Germany’s efforts are acceptable to the United States, Russia or Yugoslavia remained an open question. Annan said that the proposal would have to be discussed by the Security Council – a body in which the United States, Britain, France and Russia could veto any initiatives they do not favour.

For now, US and British leaders still leaned toward a NATO-led force, which in turn was not acceptable to Belgrade or Moscow. (Yugoslav officials have warned that they would never allow NATO troops into Kosovo, which was made a province of Serbia ten years ago.)

“My preference…is that we ensure that there is a force that is in there that has to be a NATO-led force, but there could be other people involved with it,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said after meeting Annan in Brussels. “The command and control (function) obviously has to be in the hands of NATO.”

UN officials themselves have not been eager to take centre stage in the Kosovo conflict. Annan and his top aides all worked in the UN Peacekeeping Department in the early 1990s, when European governments could not agree on how to handle the Bosnian crisis and placed UN peacekeepers in charge.

Many of those officials insisted later that the United Nations was put in the position of guaranteeing the safety of Bosnian Muslim civilians in six “safe areas”, but were never given the capability to defend those zones.

In 1995, Bosnian Serb forces seized the safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa despite UN troop presence, and reportedly massacred thousands of Muslims.

Officials now stress that before the world body becomes involved in protecting Kosovars, Annan wants to be sure that there will be no repeat of the Bosnia fiasco. But it could be some time before the NATO governments can agree with Belgrade on the conditions for any peacekeepers to be deployed, they added.