POLITICS-KOSOVO: Nations Boost Support for UN Police

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 30 1999 (IPS) - The momentum behind UN operations in Kosovo picked up following a meeting here on Wednesday of the 18-nation ‘Friends of Kosovo,’ in which governments stepped up pledges to contribute to a UN police force there.

After receiving pledges Wednesday from the United States and Germany to assist in the UN police force, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that the world body had received commitments for 1,423 police out of 1,800 needed for Kosovo.

Including border police and trainers, the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (or UNMIK) now has more than 1,900 out of 3,110 police that are required to maintain security and train local police in Kosovo, Annan added.

Such commitments, he said, could help speed up the deployment of UN police to Kosovo to ensure that “all the people, regardless of their ethnicity, can live in peace and hope.”

At the meeting of the Friends of Kosovo – a group which included a dozen foreign ministers from North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) countries – Annan warned that the “accelerated deployment” of NATO troops and UN police is needed to prevent a vacuum in law and order in Kosovo.

In recent days, even though some 24,000 NATO troops have been deployed as the Kosovo Force (KFOR) in the region, reports have increased of attacks by Kosovar Albanians – returning after some 800,000 of them were expelled earlier by Yugoslav troops – on the province’s Serbs and Gypsies.

Annan responded that a “sense of security must take root among the Serbs and the Gypsies, no less than the Kosovar Albanians, for we aspire to a multi-ethnic Kosovo.”

Bernard Miyet, UN under-secretary-general for peacekeeping, said at the Wednesday meeting that UNMIK faces the task of administering Kosovo at a time when the previous, Serb-dominated government of the province “has lost all legitimacy.”

With a “political vacuum” on the ground, he warned, the UNMIK administration “must attempt to fill that gap as quickly as possible.”

“We must ensure the early deployment of a robust UN police mission,” agreed US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. To that end, she said, “the United States will contribute up to 450 police officers for the mission, and we intend to have 100 in Kosovo by Jul. 15.” Washington will also send 100 police trainers, she added.

Germany’s foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, added that his country will send some 200 police to join the UNMIK mission.

Meanwhile, Annan said, the United Nations is redeploying police from its mission in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and expects to have some 70 to 80 police in Kosovo within the next few days.

That deployment is expected to ease tensions within Kosovo, where the KFOR troops have been responsible for security in the absence of either the UN police or the Yugoslav security forces who left the province, under agreement with NATO, two weeks ago.

Yet some snags can still hinder the rapid deployment of the police. One difficulty is that several Northern European nations would like to participate in the UN police force, but are only willing to do so if the officers are not armed, while the United States insists on police who can carry guns.

“Given the current conditions in Kosovo, these international officers should be armed and have the authority to make arrests,” Albright said. Annan added that, under the circumstances, any security forces may need some arms.

Still, the UN secretary-general added that he had expected that the police would be deployed less quickly than the KFOR soldiers.

“Police, unlike the military, are not sitting in barracks waiting for action,” he noted. But because nations must find available police from their active forces, he added, “getting police is like pulling teeth.”

Other tasks also have been the subject of considerable haggling. Chief among them is whether governments should send funds to the Yugoslav administration of President Slobodan Milosevic – still regarded as a nemesis by some NATO powers – in their overall effort to rebuild the region following the 11-week NATO attack.

“Let us resolve to do nothing to bolster the position of the current regime in Belgrade, whose leaders are wanted in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity,” Albright argued.

That is a position shared by some European nations, notably Britain, but one which also worries the United Nations as it seeks to garner funds for the reconstruction of all of Southeastern Europe.

“One should reconstruct and provide assistance for Southeastern Europe and the whole of the Balkans,” Annan said. “If governments maintain that they will not provide economic asssistance (to a Milosevic government)…then we are going to have a real challenge in reconstructing Southeastern Europe with a big hole in the middle.”

Annan urged governments to include the repair of water and electrical supplies – many of which were disrupted in Serbia and Montenegro by the NATO bombing – among the region’s humanitarian needs, and provide funds accordingly. If such humanitarian needs are not dealt with promptly, he warned, “the Serbs may be the ones on the move” by winter.