Kosovo Still Seethes as U.N. Official Nears Exit

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 18, 2000 ; Page A20

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Dec. 17 -- A huge poster behind Bernard Kouchner's
desk here in Kosovo portrays three
men--an ethnic Albanian, a Serb and a Gypsy--sharing a cup of coffee above
the words: "Let's talk about us; the future
starts with tolerance."

The poster was crafted for a U.N. campaign of tolerance in Kosovo's schools,
but it is a fantasy for this Serbian province at
large; it is the kind of conversation that never occurs here, even after 18
months of international peacekeeping and
nation-building under Kouchner's leadership as the top U.N. official in Kosovo.

It has been a wearying and frustrating assignment for Kouchner, who plans to
resign next month; Danish Defense Minister
Hans Haekkerup will succeed him.

For Kouchner, today was hardly different from any other over the past year
and a half. There were frantic morning phone
calls from the U.N. representative in the northern Kosovo town of Leposavic
about rioting Serbs, an overnight arson attack
on the U.N. police station and the seizure of some Belgian soldiers for
seven hours at a NATO base. He also heard from an
aide in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica that an ethnic Albanian was
found shot to death in a Serbian neighborhood.

Serbs in Leposavic, he learned, were angry about two things: the death of a
Serbian nationalist who was injured during
ethnic riots in Mitrovica nearly a year ago, and the arrest Saturday by
U.N.-hired Serbian police of a former member of a
Serbian militia, who was charged with speeding and possession of illegal
communications equipment. In the resulting riot,
two Serbs reportedly were killed; the Belgrade government blamed NATO
soldiers for firing irresponsibly, while NATO
blamed the Serbs for interfering with law enforcement.

Those reports came in before U.S. troops assigned to the NATO peacekeeping
operation here reported being shot at
around lunchtime, purportedly by ethnic Albanians. The soldiers were in the
process of blowing up a road used by ethnic
Albanian militants to smuggle arms from Kosovo into southern Serbia, where
they have been challenging government
security forces. No Americans were wounded in the incident, the first use of
force against the militants since the U.S.
military promised to seal Kosovo's eastern boundary early this month.

There have been many ethnically inspired shootings, arsons and riots
throughout Kouchner's tenure, during which he and his
U.N. colleagues have struggled to obtain adequate financing and manpower to
stabilize Kosovo--a province of Serbia,
Yugoslavia's dominant republic. Lacking sufficient numbers of trained police
and impartial judges, they have failed to halt a
succession of violent attacks by Kosovo Albanians on the province's Serbs
and other minorities--an ethnic cleansing in
reverse by those whom the Serb-led Yugoslav government sought to drive from
the province at gunpoint, leading to NATO
military intervention and the present U.N. administration.

Kouchner has endured furious criticism from the Yugoslav government and its
Russian allies with each step the United
Nations has taken to help Kosovo govern itself, including municipal
elections in October that brought political moderates to
power and displaced ethnic hard-liners. And Kouchner said he and other U.N.
officials here have watched with amazement
as the Western countries that fought to protect Kosovo's majority ethnic
Albanian population from the Yugoslav
government last year have rushed to embrace its newly elected leader,
Vojislav Kostunica. Kouchner said he expected
more reticence until Belgrade granted amnesty to ethnic Albanians in Serbian
jails or made other efforts to atone for its
bloody repression of the Kosovo Albanians.

But Kouchner said in an interview that he remains optimistic a better future
awaits Kosovo, the only U.N. protectorate in
Europe and a territory that is neither independent nor subject to the
dictates of Belgrade, capital of both Serbia and
Yugoslavia.

"It is a dream to make peace right now," Kouchner said when asked what
message he wanted to send President-elect Bush
and his advisers, who have expressed skepticism about keeping U.S. troops in
the Balkans for a long time. "It is our
common dream. But we need to be realistic. . . . It is not possible for
Serbs to have freedom of movement at the moment
[because of security risks]. . . . This is a long run and not a sprint."

"We need the Americans," Kouchner said. "We need the forces we have. . . .
This [peacekeeping] is a common aim for all
those involved in fighting [former Yugoslav president Slobodan] Milosevic,"
whose policies of Serbian nationalism stoked
animosities and led to a decade of bitter divisions and human rights abuses.
Milosevic, defeated for reelection by Kostunica
in October, was ousted in a subsequent popular uprising.

Those who think that Kosovo's residents will be adequately protected by the
arrival of democracy in Belgrade after
Kostunica's victory are naive, Kouchner said. "I'm sorry, that's not the way
it works," he said, calling such notions
disturbingly "colonial." Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo demand independence, and
their bitterness over the war remains so
great that any of their leaders who try to talk with Kostunica's government
would risk being killed by extremists, he said.
"Intolerance is a . . . political fact," not easily or quickly remedied, he
said.

Kouchner, a physician who helped found the humanitarian aid group Doctors
Without Borders, says he is leaving Kosovo
because he is restless. He unsuccessfully sought the position of U.N. high
commissioner for refugees and is now headed for
an unspecified French government assignment in Paris. His obvious empathy
for human suffering and openly emotional style
have won him many supporters among Kosovo residents, but many locals and
Westerners have accused his team of being
disorganized and faulted its slow repair of utilities and other basic services.

Kouchner says he has made mistakes but feels the United Nations performed
better in Kosovo than in other peacekeeping
assignments, particularly because its territory and citizenry were so
damaged by the fighting here. He added that he hopes
his experience will guide the United Nations to do a better job in similar
circumstances in the future.

The first and most important lesson to be learned from Kosovo, he said, is
that peacekeeping missions need a judicial or
law-and-order "kit" made up of trained police officers, judges and
prosecutors, plus a set of potentially draconian security
laws or regulations that are available on their arrival. This is the only
way to stop criminal behavior from flourishing in a
postwar vacuum of authority, Kouchner said.

"We did not succeed with the police," Kouchner said, noting that more than
50 countries contributed officers to the
4,000-member force but that they never trained for the mission. He
acknowledged that his own staff had repeatedly
spurned proposals to bring in foreigners who could prosecute crimes
impartially. His staff was "absolutely wrong," he said,
adding that Kosovo needs more such foreign judges and prosecutors now.

Kouchner says he has no regrets about moving as quickly as possible to
organize elections and begin handing power back
to the citizens of Kosovo.

After decades of authoritarian or communist rule, he said, they needed to
learn it was their own responsibility.

With backing from the Clinton administration, Kouchner has been pressing for
additional elections soon after he departs,
this time for a Kosovo-wide parliamentary assembly. Belgrade has opposed the
idea, arguing that the balloting would make
Kosovo Serbs feel even more excluded from the political process, but
Kouchner argues that if such an election is
postponed, ethnic Albanian militants will stoke new violence.

Kouchner says that peace will be more secure in Kosovo after new elections
are held, more jobs are created, ethnic
Albanian prisoners are freed from Serbian jails, and missing Kosovo Serbs
are accounted for. But he also says that Serbia
needs to see Kosovo's majority population not simply as terrorists but as
people "like they are, normal people."

© 2000 The Washington Post