http://www.centraleurope.com/yugoslaviatoday/news.php3?id=260325&section=default

New Kosovo UN Chief Under Fire for Belgrade Plans

PRISTINA, Jan 19, 2001 -- (Reuters) Kosovo Albanian leaders criticized the
new UN chief in Kosovo on Thursday for proposing to open a liaison office in
Belgrade.

The controversy highlights the difficulties facing former Danish Defense
Minister
Hans Haekkerup in bridging the divide between Serbs and Kosovo's ethnic
Albanian majority, despite the recent democratic changes in the Yugoslav
capital.

Haekkerup, in his first week in charge of the province, proposed opening a
UN-Kosovo liaison office to have closer contacts with the new Yugoslav
authorities following the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic, whose heavy-handed
policies in the province triggered NATO's 1999 bombing campaign.

While his predecessor Bernard Kouchner was able to ignore Milosevic's widely
shunned regime, Western diplomats say Haekkerup will have to deal with the
Yugoslav government now it is in the hands of reformers.

But ethnic Albanian leaders made clear their opposition.

"The initiative of the UN administrator is unacceptable," said Fatmir Limaj, a
spokesman for the Democratic Party of Kosovo of former Kosovo Liberation
Army leader Hashim Thaci, who fought Serb rule in the province in 1998-99.

"He should demand first that the Belgrade government opens the doors of Serbian
prisons and releases all Albanians who are held there," the Kosovo daily Zeri
quoted him as saying.

International officials say up to 700 Kosovo Albanians remain in Serbian jails,
sentenced to up to 15 years during and after NATO's 11-week bombing of
Yugoslavia in 1999 to halt repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

Naim Jerliu, vice president of the more moderate Democratic League of Kosovo,
complained that Yugoslavia has not yet sent Milosevic, an indicted war criminal,
to be tried by an international war crimes court in The Hague.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has made clear he is opposed to
extraditing Milosevic to the UN court.

"What about cooperation with The Hague tribunal and recognition of the right of
Kosovo people to self-determination?" said Jerliu, whose party won local
elections in the province last October.

The United Nations Security Council resolution which ended the Kosovo conflict
is ambiguous on whether the territory remains a part of Serbia. But it stresses
the
sovereignty of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the dominant republic.

Virtually all ethnic Albanian leaders want independence but Yugoslav and Serbian
authorities and Western powers oppose it.