Global Policy Forum

By Steven Erlanger

Eighteen months after NATO kicked out Serbian authority here, the issue of when to hold the first province-wide elections is highlighting some of the most fundamental difficulties in running Kosovo, from ethnic violence to organized crime.

The timing of the elections and how to entice Kosovar Serbs to take part are among the largest problems faced by the new United Nations administrator, Hans Haekkerup, a former Danish defense minister.

With democratic changes in Belgrade, pressure has been growing from the Albanian majority in Kosovo to move more quickly toward self-rule, via province-wide elections for a new legislative assembly.

Elections for advisory local councils went well in late October, with moderate politicians winning, the Albanians argue, so why delay this more important exercise in self-determination?

But first Mr. Haekkerup wants to establish what kind of assembly (with what powers), the vote will be for; he argues that clarity will hasten self-rule, not delay it. That decision itself could take months, and must at least be discussed with Serbs and Albanians locally, not to mention agreed upon by key members of the United Nations Security Council.

The international community wants to avoid any suggestion that Kosovo is getting a constitution. That would imply a decision on Kosovo's final status -- a topic no one but the Albanians, who demand independence, wants to touch.

Serbs boycotted the October municipal ballot, but participation this time is essential for the elections to be considered legitimate. Some political encouragement may come from the new authorities in Belgrade, where Mr. Haekkerup will open an office.

To secure that help, however, he and the NATO-led peacekeepers need to devise a fairly specific plan for the return home of some of the more than 100,000 Kosovar Serbs who fled the province. The Security Council resolution that ended the war promised that they could return to secure lives in Kosovo.

The new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, says Serbs should return in large numbers, for their safety, but the United Nations refugee agency and NATO's generals have concluded that the numbers should be smaller and less obtrusive, to avoid protests and attacks by Albanians.

Everyone agrees that Serbs should return to Serb enclaves, a move that belies the goal of a multiethnic Kosovo but should provide better protection.

Mr. Haekkerup has also said that he intends to confront organized crime and the failures of a judicial system in which witnesses and judges are easily intimidated, and in which only the few international judges and prosecutors have been willing to charge or convict ethnic Albanians. Some of the crimes, both interethnic and financial, are tied to important Albanian politicians and former guerrilla commanders.

An internal United Nations document given to The New York Times by international officials argues for the pressing need to restore order and stability, even if Western standards of human rights are diluted in a post-war situation where the courts work badly.

"Human rights principles should not be viewed as operating to dogmatically bar action which must be taken to address urgent security issues," the paper says.

The paper is described by a senior United Nations official who helped draft it under Mr. Haekkerup's predecessor, Bernard Kouchner, as an important rejoinder in the argument between "those who want security and those who want to keep a Western standard of rights."

The issue is a live one for the peacekeeping force as well, which has jailed members and suspected members of an armed Albanian group based in Serbia on fuzzy legal grounds stemming from the authority of the military commander of the force.

Mr. Kouchner was heavily criticized in November for the failures of justice here in a report issued by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and he left the province still bitter about the criticism.

A struggle also exists between those who want quick elections and those who want perfect ones. The Europeans tend to favor a later vote, for fear of what one European official called "the domino effect" of a legislature. A new assembly would push for legislative powers and might call for Kosovo's independence, or start drafting a constitution -- a symbolic but potentially embarrassing gesture.

But the democratically elected politicians in power in Belgrade also need an interlocutor to discuss Kosovo's future, and until the province holds elections, no Albanian will have enough political legitimacy.