POLITICS-KOSOVO: U.N. Faces Time for Decisions

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 1998 (IPS) - The coming week will be decisive for the United Nations which faces the challenge of backing words with action in dealing with the crisis over the conflict in Kosovo.

Some diplomats, like Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo, hope the week will see military units from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries finally strike at Yugoslavia to punish Belgrade for its tough action in Kosovo, and against the province’s Albanian population.

“There are enough declarations,” Milo told reporters here Friday. “Now is the time to take strong decisions and concrete actions, because (Yugoslav President Slobodan) Milosevic has long experience – starting with Bosnia – of manouevres.”

The Albanian foreign minister called on the United Nations to punish Belgrade with air strikes and to send an international presence to protect the Albanian majority in Kosovo and also “to start investigations into Milosevic as a war criminal”.

Earlier, the U.N. Security Council stepped up pressure on Milosevic by condemning the atrocities in Kosovo, where some 900 people are estimated to have been killed – and as many as 300,000 forced from their homes – after a Yugoslav Army crackdown on the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (or UCK).

Despite Milo’s hopes that NATO air strikes were imminent, there were contrary signals that the United States and other major powers were not yet ready to attack Belgrade.

Even as U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright declared Thursday that “NATO is now prepared to act”, she added, “We believe the best solution continues to be a diplomatic solution.” Meanwhile, two permanent members of the Security Council – Russia and China – oppose using military force in Kosovo, while a third, France, would prefer an explicit Council authorisation before ant could be carried out.

This has left a vacuum among the key U.N. powers over how to respond to the crisis. Britain, another permanent Council member, called for an emergency meeting on Kosovo which took place Thursday – but could only forge agreement on a mild statement which criticised “those responsible for…atrocities,” rather than the Yugoslav security forces in particular.

Supporters of attacks on Yugoslavia are looking now to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report on Kosovo to be tabled in the Security Council Monday.

Milo said Albania hopes the report will call for strong measures to deal with the crisis. Canada’s foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, suggested that, in addition to measures against Belgrade, there may now be a need to send an international force to Kosovo to protect the large displaced population there.

U.N. officials remain tight-lipped about what the report may recommend, but sources suggest that the secretary-general is considering plans for dispatching some type of international force as long as the humanitarian crisis persists.

Still, following years of failing to prevent the Belgrade government from contributing to atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia- Hercegovina – both of which are now independent states – the United Nations is used to frustration in handling Milosevic. Kosovo, a largely Albanian province within the Serb Republic itself, is in an even trickier position, with no nation openly championing the separatist aims of the UCK.

An illustration of the slow pace of forcing Belgrade to comply with international demands was apparent on Friday, when the Council heard from a U.S. judge working for the war crimes tribunal on the former Yugoslavia, who accused Belgrade of refusing to carry out arrest warrants for three indicted Serbians. (They allegedly were involved in the 1991 murder of 260 unarmed men in the Croatian city of Vukovar.)

“No state should be permitted to act as if it is above the law,” the judge, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, said. “There comes a time when such defiance cannot be ignored. That time is now. The world community, embodied by the United Nations, must not allow this territory to revert to the catastrophe we watched begin and escalate in the early 1990s.”

In response, British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock told reporters, on behalf of the Council, merely that the 15-nation body “deplored the continuing non-compliance by the Belgrade authorities”.

With most Council states unable to agree on specific means to prod Belgrade to comply, such diplomatic slaps are currently the most the United Nations has to offer. Whether NATO will mount a more forceful response will become clearer next week – but, short of a fresh round of atrocities in Kosovo, few diplomats here are expecting any major shift from the muddled policy of recent months.