UN efforts to administer Kosovo are picking up pace in what one senior UN official called a “uniquely strong” mission that now in effect governs the Yugoslav province.

“There has not been anything like this before,” said Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister and UN special Balkans envoy, on Thursday.

“The United Nations is tasked with the interim administration of the country,” he said, referring to a UN resolution that set up the UN Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). “UNMIK is in fact the government of Kosovo.”

The UN civilian office’s task, he argued, has been particularly important given the “power vacuum in Kosovo” created by the departure of Yugoslav troops from the province.

In recent days as troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have been deployed throughout Kosovo, the Albanian-dominated and separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) has tried to take over police stations and other installations, Bildt noted.

“It is important to prevent one or the other group from assuming powers they do not have,” Bildt warned.

To that end, Sergio Vieira de Mello, the interim administrator of UNMIK, has quickly set up some administrative structures and offices for the UN effort.

But so far, as UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged Thursday, the world body is still focusing on refugee relief and leaving larger questions of Kosovo’s administration for the future.

“The major issue at the moment is to help get the refugees back and make sure they come back in an orderly manner,” Annan said after meeting British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.

He said the United Nations hoped to bring some 400,000 Albanians – out of a total of more than 850,000 expelled from Kosovo in recent months – back to the province before winter. But he warned against a “spontaneous” return before UNMIK has time to arrange food and shelter for the refugees.

In the longer term, Bildt argued, UNMIK will need to take on even larger tasks, including administering Kosovo’s economy.

“There is virtually no functioning economy,” the Balkans envoy said. “There is a need for food, and a need for jobs.”

At the same time, he pointed to UNMIK’s challenge by noting that the UN administrators will have to keep up a level of taxation that is fairly standard for the region, as well as to maintain all existing Yugoslav border taxes.

“If we don’t collect taxes – say, on petrol – then petrol prices in Kosovo are going to be substantially lower than petrol prices everywhere else,” he said. As a result, Bildt said, UN administrators had to take note of “the realities of the Balkans” so as not to destabilise local economies.

Also, UNMIK must set up self-governing institutions among the Kosovars so that the province can be autonomous from Yugoslavia, a task which many officials believe will include running elections for officials – and possibly, in several years, even a vote on Kosovo’s status.

Although the mission’s scale is large, its ambitions are similar to previous UN efforts. The United Nations is an old hand at governing conflict areas, and in fact maintains the small UN Transitional Authority for Eastern Slavonia (UNTAES) in nearby Croatia.

UN programmes in places ranging from Namibia to Haiti have also included a wide range of administrative tasks in addition to other objectives, such as training police or setting up elections. In the early 1990s, the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) governed much of Cambodian society while preparing for 1993 elections.

Yet UNMIK, Bildt argued, is qualitatively different, and considerably more powerful. It is an interim administration, which derives its authority from Chapter Seven of the UN Charter – which allows the use of force – even as it is instructed to respect the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Yugoslavia.

For all practical purposes, Vieira de Mello has tremendous power over Kosovo’s day-to-day governance, although over time UNMIK is to fill most administrative positions with Kosovars.

The amount of authority exercised by UNMIK has helped to fuel a guessing game in recent weeks over who will replace Vieira de Mello – a Brazilian diplomat who heads the UN humanitarian affairs office – as the permanent UNMIK administrator.

Annan said Thursday that Paddy Ashdown, who stepped down recently as head of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party, is a candidate.

Other European politicians – including outgoing European Humanitarian Commissioner Emma Bonino and Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring – are also in the running, sources say.