POLITICS-KOSOVO: UN Launches Police Mission

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 14 1999 (IPS) - The UN’s Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK) had started work in Pristina on planning the civilian-led mission that will administer the Yugoslav province and deploy thousands of police, officials said Monday.

UNMIK interim chief, Under Secretary-General Sergio Vieira de Mello entered Kosovo on Sunday and, although many facets of the mission and its mandate still had to be determined, “the embyro is there,” said UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette.

“This is a new type of mission” for UNMIK, Frechette said. In the past, she noted, UN personnel handled all the tasks – military and civilian – of their mandates.

This time, however, UNMIK civilian officials and the military leaders of the Kosovo Force (KFOR) had separate chains of command, although both groups would coordinate closely with each other, she said.

Frechette added that, even in UNMIK’s civilian work, the tasks required for Kosovo’s administration and rebuilding “will be done both through UN agencies and non-UN agencies.”

In a report issued Monday, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said that the world body would be responsible for administering Kosovo, restoring basic public services, providing police officers and trainers and overseeing the judicial system.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), meanwhile, would take charge of all humanitarian affairs, including the return of as many as 900,000 Kosovar Albanians expelled from the province in recent months.

Other tasks, would be handled by European bodies acting under Vieira de Mello’s authority, Annan said.

The European Union would oversee “rebuilding the physical, economic and social infrastructure,” while the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) would be in charge of strengthening Kosovo’s institutions and monitoring elections, Annan wrote.

The mission, one of the largest for the United Nations in years, was the first major UN effort at governing an area since the world body took over as a transitional authority in Cambodia at the beginning of the decade.

In recent years, the United Nations also has governed the small Eastern Slavonia region in Croatia.

European bodies would not only head the reconstruction and institution-building components of UNMIK but also would pay for them, said UN spokesman Fred Eckhard.

“It is assumed that the OSCE and European Union will finance their part of the mission,” while UNHCR’s work will be paid for through voluntary funding, Eckhard said.

The United Nations, however, would still have to fund several major components, including deployment of the civilian police. Those units, Annan noted in his report, would serve as an interim police body and train Kosovars to form a local police force.

Frechette told reporters Monday that the number of police to be deployed could be “in the thousands,” while other sources suggested as many as 2,000 to 3,000 officers. (By contrast, the KFOR military presence is to comprise some 50,000 troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Russia.)

UNMIK would have its work cut out in building new administrative and police bodies, following the brutal 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO and the concurrent expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Muslim Kosovars, observers believed.

UN officials were discussing which forces would be eligible for inclusion in the police force – and whether the separatist Kosovar Liberation Army (KLA), regarded by Belgrade and even some US and European officials as a terrorist force, could participate.

Frechette refused to speculate on whether a future Kosovar police force could include KLA members. But the deputy secretary- general said that she would be travelling to Geneva this week to determine other aspects of the mission’s mandate, including how it will function with the European bodies.

“The contact has been excellent” with them so far, she said.

Similarly, Vieira de Mello – a Brazilian diplomat – already had begun to coordinate his team’s work with Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, the British head of KFOR, and the two officials were expected to maintain daily contact, Frechette said.