March 27, 2004
Rushing a decision on Kosovo's status would be giving in to the violence which rocked the United Nations protectorate last week, the U.N Kosovo governor told a newspaper on Saturday. "The vagueness of the national status of Kosovo is a strain on people. Various nationalistic movements see this kind of a situation as insulting," Harri Holkeri, the chief U.N. envoy in Kosovo, told Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat. But a quick decision was not the answer. "That would equal to giving in to this violence," Holkeri said.
Clashes between Kosovo Albanians and Serbs last week left 28 dead, hundreds injured and forced some 3,600 Serbs to flee. The Albanians, blamed for the anti-Serb violence, want independence for Kosovo from Serbia.
Holkeri's comments were an apparent response to former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke who said this week the Kosovo violence was predictable as the international community had been too slow deciding its final status. Holbrooke said he had told Holkeri as far back as October to take action to accelerate the status talks and warned that if the delay continued, violence would escalate.
The U.N., together with the United States and the European Union, will decide whether Kosovo has met democratic standards before determining its final status. Holkeri told the paper the U.N. needed to change and renew its strategy, but did not say how. "This multi-ethnicity is not working as planned," he said. Kosovo is legally a province of Serbia, but has been a U.N. protectorate since June 1999 after 11 weeks of NATO bombing forced out Serb troops and ended their repression of Albanians during an Albanian separatist uprising.
Its unresolved final status is the subject of bitter dispute between independence-seeking Albanians and Serbs who say the province could be granted autonomy, but only under the sovereignty of Serbia and Montegegro.
More Information on Kosovo
