August 8, 2000
The international community is doing all it can to prevent ethnic violence in Kosovo but "tolerance is not going to come at the point of their guns" the United Nations said Tuesday, responding to criticism from a major humanitarian organisation.
Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders - MSF) said Monday it was pulling out of the north of the province where minority communities are still the targets of shootings, grenade attacks, threats and robbery one year after a massive international security force and an army of UN bureaucrats arrived.
"The humanitarian organisation refuses to continue its operations on behalf of the ethnic minorities in a context where basic protection for these populations is not being guaranteed by the military and civilian administration of Kosovo," MSF said in a statement released in Pristina.
But Kosovo's international authorities insisted Tuesday that the peoples of Kosovo would have to learn to live together if violence was to end.
"We're here for the long term, and we're working to stabilise the situation and encourage local political leaders to work towards co-existence. But tolerance is not going to come at the point of our guns." said Susan Manuel, spokeswoman for the UN administration in Pristina.
She said the administration had been "surprised" by MSF's broadside, and had not been consulted on the agency's decision to suspend medical care in minority communities in the Serbian-majority north of the province and in Serbian enclaves in Albanian-majority areas.
"We're well aware that the situation continues to be precarious," Manuel said, "But everything we're doing on a political and security level is geared to ensuring minority rights and safety."
Major Craig Snow, chief spokesman for the KFOR multinational peacekeeping force, said troops were doing all they could to protect "all the citizens of Kosovo" but added: "KFOR can not be everywhere at once, that's the reality."
The leaders of Kosovo's two main ethnic Albanian political parties and representatives of the Serbian minority community signed a declaration in Airlie, Virginia in July, vowing to stamp out ethnic violence. Attacks on minorities are still commonplace, however. On Wednesday last week, for example, three Roma were killed by a booby trap placed in their garden in an ethnically mixed area just south of Pristina.
And the UNHCR announced on July 28 that 21 ethnic Albanian families had been driven out of the northern part of the town of Kosovksa Mitrovica where they faced threats and physical attacks from Serb extremists.
MSF's strongly worded declaration will be embarrassing for Bernard Kouchner, head of the UN administration in Kosovo and the province's de facto governor, as it was he who founded the group. Koucher was due back in Pristina late Tuesday after a short holiday.
And the agency's decision to pull out of its programmes will leave a gaping hole in medical and psychological care for some of Kosovo's most vulnerable communities, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees which is co-ordinating humanitarian aid in the province.
"They provide care for thousands of people every week and are the key providers of medical aid in these areas," UNHCR spokeswoman Paula Ghedini told "No non-governmental organisation takes such a decision lightly and we are meeting with them today to try and understand the reasoning behind it and discuss who is going to take over their work."
Since the end of the bitter 1998-1999 war between ethnic Albanian separatist guerrillas and Yugoslav forces, brought about by a NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, there have been more than 600 murders in Kosovo, the vast majority of them unsolved.
