Global Policy Forum

By Dave Clark

Hans Haekkerup stepped into one of the toughest jobs in the Balkans Monday when he took over as Kosovo's UN chief, pledging to steer the violence-ridden Serbian province toward its first post-war general elections.

Arriving at United Nations mission in the Kosovo (UNMIK) headquarters in Pristina, the Danish former defence minister said he would focus efforts on building a legal framework for the polls in the breakaway Sebian province, without setting an exact date for the vote. "I am going to put up a legal framework for the elections and then I will decide on the election date," he said.

Haekkerup met his UNMIK team and praised the work done by his predecessor, French humanitarian Bernard Kouchner, in the past 19 months since the end of the bitter conflict which pitted ethnic Albanian separatists against the forces of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. "I think a very good job has been done already. I'm not starting from fresh ground and I am looking forward to work with the team," he said.

Before signing off, Kouchner said the key to building stability in Kosovo -- still bitterly divided between Albanian and Serb communities -- would be general elections in spring.

The UN administrator is tasked with building substantial autonomy in Kosovo after more than a direct of direct rule from Milosevic's Belgrade. "I have told the international community that I am convinced that holding general elections this year is an imperative both for democracy, stability and tolerance," Kouchner said. "But it is up to you -- all of you -- to take responsibility and prove that you deserve the future you hope for," he said, adding that polls would give the ethnic Albanian majority a stake in the province.

Kouchner has left his successor with the emergency work done -- houses rebuilt, local councils in place, 800,000 ethnic Albanians refugees back the exile Milosevic chased them into, and a rudimentary court system. But Haekkerup, who arrived Saturday, will have to attack Kosovo's endemic problems of ethnic violence, organised crime and an entrenched gun culture.

One of the songs played by the warm-up rockband before Kouchner's farewell address to Kosovo's decision makers was the rap hit "Gangster's Paradise," prompting remarks that that is exactly what the province has become in the 19 months since the UN took control.

Kouchner himself accepted before leaving that the greatest failure of his mandate -- marked by ongoing ethnic killings, mass jailbreaks, spectacular miscarriages of justice and ineffective policing -- was his inability to prevent minorities, especially Serbs, being murdered by extremists. He blamed the reluctance of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority to root out the killers in its own communities, to co-operate with police and courts and its failure to build bridges with the Serb community.

Haekkerup admitted that one of the key problems for the UN administration -- the return of up to 200,000 Serbs and non-Albanians who have fled the province since June 1999 -- would need more time. "My job is to create a secure environment, but that might take some time yet," Haekkerup said.

Kouchner was able to drive forward his work to give Kosovo the "self-governement and substantial autonomy" during the first months of his mandate when Yugoslavia was still in the hands of then-president Milosevic, accused of war crimes by a UN court. But the election of President Vojislav Kostunica, by democratic means, has changed the political terrain for Haekkerup, who must now tread carefully to avoid offending Yugoslav sensibilities too much by appearing to distance Pristina further from Belgrade.

Further talks over Kosovo would now have to involve Belgrade, still dead-set against Kosovo's independence, especially since Kostunica's opening up to the west has won Yugoslavia membership of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which will organise any poll, and the UN.

Haekkerup will have to talk to Kostunica, something Kouchner never did directly, and risk provoking the fury of the ethnic Albanians who regard him as simply a smooth-talking version of his hated predecessor. Even more delicate will be trying to convince ethnic Albanian representatives to make the trip to Belgrade, or some neutral meeting place.

Veteran moderate Ibrahim Rugova would be the obvious choice, for his party won local elections in October, but a previous visit to see Milosevic nearly destroyed his support at home, and he has so far refused overtures to make the trip.

On Tuesday, Haekkerup was to meet both Rugova and his main opponent Hashim Thaci, a former guerrilla chief who now leads the Democratic party of Kosovo.