Iraq - Kosovo

[Ivo Skoric]

The jury is still out on which model of occupation is better suited 
for the "failing states" - the EU or the US one. The EU favors UN 
nominal control and NATO military protection. The US likes to do 
everything by themselves. Kosovo is under international occupation 
for past 5 years. Before that it was under minority imposed martial 
law. Not surprisingly the majority of elected representatives in 
Kosovo parliament voted that they should be let to rule their own 
country. Only Kosovo, unlike Iraq, has never been a country. However, 
while everybody knows that it is a joke, and that the US military 
still controls Iraq, the Americans administratively let Iraqis govern 
themselves in slighly more than a year since the occupation. While 
Iraqis were given a blank check by the US in the country at the edge 
of the civil war, the Kosovars are still told by the Europeans that 
"they must first meet internationally mandated standards before there 
can be movement toward clarifying Kosova's final status." The two 
different approaches extend to other legal matters as well: while the 
US still keep the custody of Saddam Hussein, they are letting the 
Iraqi court put him on trial. In contrast with that, Europeans insist 
that Slobodan Milosevic must be tried by the International Court, 
which may as well let him walk soon, in absence of conclusive 
evidence and due to his poor health.

ivo


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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 8, No. 129, Part II, 9 July 2004


KOSOVA'S PARLIAMENT SET TO CHALLENGE UN'S AUTHORITY

By Patrick Moore

 Kosova's parliament voted on 8 July to adopt several
constitutional changes, including one establishing the right to hold 
a referendum on independence. Other approved measures call for 
switching responsibility for international relations and public 
security from the UN civilian administration (UNMIK) to Kosova's own 
officials.
 UNMIK has repeatedly warned the parliament that it is not
competent to make changes to the Constitutional Framework. Only the 
UN
Security Council, which adopted Resolution 1244 in 1999, has the
authority to make such changes, UNMIK stresses. One unnamed
international official called the parliament's vote a waste of time.
 But in the wake of the ethnically motivated unrest in March,
many political leaders in Kosova have called for speeding up the
transfer of authority from UNMIK to Kosovar officials. In a
well-publicized editorial, publisher Veton Surroi suggested in the 17
June issue of "Koha Ditore" that the next head of the international
administration would do well not to bring any grand plan along.
Instead, he should simply let the elected Kosovar officials get on
with governing, intervening only when absolutely necessary.
 In fact, many Kosovars argue that the violence showed that
the province is a time bomb waiting to explode so long as the status
issue remains unresolved. They stress that time has come to end what
is essentially a colonial administration in a postcolonial world,
moving toward independence based on self-determination and majority
rule, as has been the standard in the post-1945 process of
decolonization.
 These and other scenarios regarding Kosova were discussed on
17 and 18 June at an off-the-record conference in Berlin sponsored by
the German Foreign Ministry, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the
Munich-based Center for Applied Policy Research, titled "Rethinking
the Balkans."
 Many of the Western participants at that gathering stressed
that the Kosovars must first meet internationally mandated standards
before there can be movement toward clarifying Kosova's final status.
 Serbian participants, for their part, were generally keen to
note the importance of all minority rights, including freedom of
movement and the right of all refugees and displaced persons to go
home. Several Serbs stressed that they will measure the Albanians'
sincerity by the extent to which they protect the Serbs' rights,
adding that few Serbs are optimistic on this score following the 
March
violence.
 Instead, many Serbs argued for some form of administrative
partition. One Serb said that dividing Bosnia into two ethnically
based entities in 1995 might not have been a perfect solution, but it
has worked. Besides, he wondered, how can one charge that Bosnia is a
weak state when it has the might of the international community 
behind
it?
 Some of the Kosovar Albanian participants took the opposite
approach, arguing that one reason for the frustration that led to the
March violence was the tendency of UNMIK to try to build a 
multiethnic
society on the basis of ethnic divisions. Instead, Hashim Thaci of 
the
Democratic Party of Kosova (PDK) told "RFE/RL Balkan Report" on the
margins of the conference that Kosova needs a solution resembling
Macedonia's 2001 Ohrid agreement, which would reconstruct Kosova on
the civic principle rather than on an ethnic basis. This, Thaci
continued, would mean an end to enclaves and parallel structures by
treating Kosova as a single country. Serbs would have the right to
dual Serbian and Kosovar citizenship and to contacts with Serbia.
Their cultural and historical monuments would be protected, Thaci
stressed.
 But at least some of the Westerners at the Berlin conference
called for recasting rather than ending the foreign administration in
Kosova. Some participants close to Germany's opposition Free
Democratic Party (FDP) repeated their party's call for replacing 
UNMIK
with an EU administration, while maintaining NATO's security 
presence.
 One FDP member of the German parliament told "RFE/RL Balkan
Report" on the margins of the conference that the EU is more
knowledgeable about Kosova's affairs than are many international
officials from Africa or Asia, adding that the EU is in the best
position to offer the Kosovars incentives to meet the necessary
standards. When asked what the EU would do if the Kosovar Albanian
majority wanted a political as well as a military role for the United
States, the FDP legislator replied, "We'll see."
 For their part, many Serbian participants eagerly leaned
forward in their seats when the subject of EU rule in Kosova was
raised.
 But the Kosovar Albanians tended to be skeptical, sensing
that the project is more an attempt by some in the EU to show that
Brussels can solve Balkan problems than something that will truly
benefit Kosova. One Kosovar remarked that it seems strange that
foreigners want to leave Iraq at the first sign of violence, but when
unrest breaks out in Kosova, some foreigners seem more intent on
staying than they were before.




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