UN appeals to members to "invest in peace" in KosovoMonday, 06-Mar-2000 1:10PM
UNITED NATIONS, March 6 (AFP) - The United Nations renewed an urgent appeal to member states on Monday to provide judges and lawyers as well as police officers to fill "a critical gap" in its administration of Kosovo.
Eight months after the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was established, there is no functioning judicial system in the province, said Dennis McNamara, the senior UNMIK official for humanitarian affairs.
McNamara was speaking at a news conference while Bernard Kouchner, the head of UNMIK, presented the latest report on Kosovo to the UN Security Council.
The report recalled that, by Thursday, 45 countries had contributed a total of 2,361 police officers to the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), less than half its authorised strength of 4,718.
The report appealed to member states to provide UNMIK, "as a matter of urgency, with the necessary number of UNMIK police officers, special police units, international judges and prosecutors, as well as penal experts."
McNamara said "the law and order problems are at the very heart of many of the problem we face in Kosovo today."
Even when "the perpetrators of extreme violence" were arrested they went unprosecuted "because of the unwillingness or the inadequacy of the local system," he said.
The report, signed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, said the recent explosion of violence in Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, was a reminder that "ethnic tensions can still trigger dramatic cycles of violence."
It recalled that eight people had been killed in the first two days of unrest, on February 3 and 4, and that since then "some 5,000 Kosovo Serbs remain in isolated enclaves in the southern outskirts of the city as well as approximately 2,000 Kosovo Albanians in northern outskirts."
McNamara described Mitrovica as "only the visible tip of the Kosovo-wide problem of violence against minorities: intimidation, harassment, persecution."
Non-Albanian minorities lived under siege in Kosovo "without basic freedom of movement," he said.
McNamara said UNMIK was worried about a possible spillover of violence into southern Serbia, where between 60,000 and 70,000 Albanians still live.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 Albanians had entered Kosovo from that region since UNMIK was set up, he said,
He described them "rural families who got caught up in a conflict between armed elements on both sides" and said "we are concerned about further displacements if that conflict is allowed to continue."
McNamara said UNMIK supported the principle of allowing refugees to return home, but added that the conditions in Kosovo were not appropriate.
"Our plea is that premature returns of displaced populations into an ongoing conflict situation can be counter-productive and may in fact exacerbate the situation," he said.
Annan's report said the "immediate and decisive measures taken by UNMIK and KFOR to address the situation in Mitrovica have calmed the situation."
But, it added, "it is essential to move beyond the status quo, which is inherently unstable."
In the first instance, he said, "the deployment of UNMIK police officers and special police units from member states must be accelerated."
There was also a need for the UN to speed up the training of local police, he said.
In his report, Annan said there had been an increase in the number of police joining UNMIK and that 500 new recruits were expected by the end of March.
But he pointed out that 310 police had been moved to Mitrovica from the town of Pec, in western Kosovo, and said that for the time being KFOR would continue to provide "primary law and order services" in Pec.
The largest contributor to UNMIK's civilian police, the United States, has provided 478 officers by Thursday.
Germany had provided 243, Ghana 136 and Russia 122. Other large contributors were Canada, with 94 officers, Pakistan (88) and India (87).Story from AFP / Robert Holloway
Copyright 2000 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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