October 20, 1999Annan Says Quick Elections in Kosovo May Not Help Tensions
By JANE PERLEZ
WASHINGTON -- The secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, warned Tuesday that the "built in tension" between the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo who want independence and the United Nations, which is administering the territory as part of Yugoslavia, would mount as time went on.
Annan suggested that he had no immediate solution to the problem but stressed that holding quick elections was not an easy answer.
He said he was determined that the United Nations should not repeat what he called the "mistakes" made in Bosnia, where the results of national elections held nine months after the Dayton peace accord "legitimized those who caused the war" when hard-line ethnic leaders were voted into office.
Speaking to reporters here after his first trip to Kosovo last week, Annan said: "We have a mandate to administer the territory as part of sovereign Federal Republic of Yugoslavia but those we are administering want independence. This ambiguity is going to bring problems down the line."
It well could develop, he said, that the ethnic Albanians who make up the overwhelming proportion of the population regard the U.N. administrators as an "occupation force."
Clinton administration officials who have recently visited Kosovo acknowledge that relations between the people of Kosovo and U.N. administrators have deteriorated.
Some of this was due to unrealistic expectations on the part of the ethnic Albanians, who believed that the United Nations would bring instant independence, and some was partly due to the slow progress of rebuilding damaged homes in time for winter.
The atmosphere was not helped, administration officials have said, by the continuing high level of tension between the estimated 97,000 Serbs who have remained in Kosovo and the ethnic Albanians, as well as by tensions among different Albanian factions.
Annan did not commit himself to a date for elections but said he favored holding local elections first. He will receive an assessment in about two weeks on the technical aspects of holding elections in a place where voter rolls are mostly destroyed and where ethnic Albanians have not participated in elections for more than a decade to protest rule from Belgrade.
It was essential, Annan said, to give new political parties time to organize so that entrenched political forces did not automatically win.
The State Department has said it would like to see municipal elections held next spring. But the Balkan Action Council, a non-governmental organization headed by former senior U.S. diplomats, argues that "rolling municipal elections" should start immediately.
With quick registration of voters in one or two towns, there was a chance for new political parties, including one formed by a break-away group from the Kosovo Liberation Army, to gain ground, said James Hooper, the executive director of the council.
Annan said that in administering Kosovo, the United Nations had to tread a fine line between making decisions that would help create an independent entity and relying on the authorities in Yugoslavia and its leader, Slobodan Milosevic. According to the U. N. mandate, Kosovo is to be administered as a self-governing autonomous region of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
But Annan said this was a difficult task, particularly in building a sustainable economy. For example, the mines of Kosovo, traditionally one of the major employers there, are owned by Serbs who now live in Belgrade. It was not clear how ownership of such properties would be decided until the final status of Kosovo was decided, he said.
Some everyday issues had demanded action -- like the recent decision to use the German mark instead of the Yugoslav dinar as the currency -- which some interpreted as a move toward independence, Annan said. But in fact, the currency and new license plates for cars were practical matters that had little to do with the final status of Kosovo.
And the final status may not be decided until Milosevic is no longer in charge in Yugoslavia. It was not "realistic, Annan said, to engage Milosevic in a discussion on the future of Kosovo.Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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