August 30, 1999U.N. Envoy Pushes for Kosovo Democracy
By STEVEN ERLANGER
PRISTINA, Kosovo -- The new American ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, met Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders Sunday and urged them to help build the free, law-abiding and democratic society they say they want and that the NATO alliance went to war to provide.
And he encouraged the U.N. officials trying to run this new protectorate, including its leader, Bernard Kouchner, to worry less about the world organization's infamous bureaucracy in New York and do what they think is necessary to make Kosovo a success.
"Don't always ask -- just do it," Holbrooke told them at a private lunch, a U.N. official said, stressing the importance of a successful outcome in Kosovo to the reputation and future of the United Nations itself.
Holbrooke's meeting with the political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim Thaci, 29, was both pointed and important, American officials said, with the future role of the "army's" members being negotiated now and a deadline for its "demilitarization" on Sept. 19.
While the army will be "transformed," foreign negotiators say, it will not become a Kosovo "national guard," an outcome that American officials originally held out to Thaci. Current negotiations, at a sensitive stage, are about issues like the name of the new group, its numbers and the number of weapons it will be able to retain, perhaps as a sort of army reserve.
The United Nations is also trying to move Thaci and his followers into active politics, but Thaci is said to be reluctant to give up his status in many Albanians' eyes as the leader of a liberation movement that helped drive the Serbs out of Kosovo.
He is said to oppose the idea of leading a new party, fearing that it would turn him into "just another politician," an official said, which is part of what the United Nations would like to achieve.
Holbrooke, who will meet Thaci again on Monday, was said Sunday to have expressed understanding of the Albanian's hesitations. But he demurred publicly when Thaci, after their long meeting at his office, told waiting reporters that the two men agreed on every point of demilitarization and transformation of the Liberation Army, and that both agreed that "Kosovars should be the ones to decide for themselves the future of Kosovo."
Holbrooke said simply: "I'll let Thaci speak for himself and his colleagues," adding: "We see progress and problems. But at least we are in a free Kosovo, and with NATO to provide security, it allows the creation of a pluralistic democracy."
He said Thaci "assured me of his commitment to those principles," and said they had discussed another important point, unmentioned by Thaci, "the issue of corruption, which is a cancer that can destroy a regime."
Holbrooke also met Ibrahim Rugova, 55, the traditional leader of the Kosovo Albanians, whose nonviolent opposition to Belgrade produced few results. But Rugova remains popular among many older and rural Albanians, and Kouchner has worked hard to bring both Thaci and Rugova together on a Transitional Council that might take some executive responsibility for running Kosovo.
Holbrooke praised the sometimes vague Rugova for his courage and urged him to stay the course, saying: "The war is over, but forging a democracy here is a difficult process. NATO has to provide security, but it's up to the political leaders to provide the political democracy, and that is the message we hope to convey."
Later, Holbrooke met with Veton Surroi, the publisher of the newspaper Koha Ditorer and a politician-in-waiting. Surroi caused a ruckus 10 days ago when he published a stinging article titled "The Sounds of Shame," about the disgrace of Albanian revenge attacks against Serbs and Gypsies, many of them elderly or in their teens, who were clearly not guilty of atrocities against Albanians.
"I have to say that I feel ashamed to hear that for the first time in the history of Kosovo, now the Kosovar Albanians are committing monstrous atrocities," he wrote. "I cannot stop myself from saying that it should deeply concern our people that for the first time our moral code of untouchability of women, children and elderly has been broken."
More importantly, Surroi said, "We must deal with one or more organized systems of violence, which are viciously directed toward the Serbs. And we also have to deal with a system of thinking that lurks behind the violence and assumes that every Serb must be punished for what happened in Kosovo. That system of thinking is called fascism."
Even more controversial, he suggested that this organized violence would, in the absence of Serbs, be turned against other Albanians, and asked: "Is this what we fought for?"
Thaci, entering the Transitional Council meeting a week ago, is said to have commented that if anyone there called him a fascist he would leave the room.
Holbrooke's meeting with Surroi was private.
After a meeting with Kouchner, asked about the responsibility of NATO troops and the United Nations for the Serb exodus, Holbrooke decried hatred on both sides and called Kosovo "a mess for a long time." Kouchner said he was unsatisfied with the security provided the few Serbs who remain, but said it was improving, and said plaintively: "How can you change the mentality of the people in so short a time? It's not only impossible, it's childish to believe it can be done in so short a time."
Perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 Serbs remain in the province, down from an estimated prewar population of perhaps 180,000.
Earlier, Lt Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, the commander of the NATO-led peacekeepers here, told Holbrooke and reporters that "the frequency of security incidents continues to go down, the serious crime rate continues to go down."
He said the remaining Serbs felt under pressure, "but I do not believe that we are seeing a big exodus now and indeed we are seeing continually small numbers of Kosovo Serbs returning to Kosovo."
Holbrooke, who visited a mass grave site of murdered Albanians on Saturday, has another day of talks on Monday before leaving Kosovo.Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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