UN mission on Kosovo starts work amid meek Serb protests

Apr 26, 2007, 10:55 GMT

Belgrade - UN Security Council ambassadors on Thursday launched their Kosovo fact-finding mission in Serbia, with being whisked by protesting Serb refugees in Belgrade.

The 15-member delegation was led into the Serbian government seat through a back entrance, apparently to avoid Serbs displaced from Kosovo who gathered at the main entrance.

The crowd, waving banners, however, comprised just dozens of people. Belgrade politicians insist that Kosovo is a sacred heartland to the vast majority of Serbs.

Led by the Belgian ambassador to the UN, Johann Verbeke, and including US and Russian envoys, Zalmay Khalilzad and Vitaly Churkin, the UN mission was due to depart for Kosovo after meeting caretaker Serbian Premier Vojislav Kostunica, President Boris Tadic and other officials.

Meanwhile, several thousand displaced Kosovo Serbs gathered at Jarinje, on the boundary with Kosovo, the Beta news agency said.

They were brought in by busses as early as Wednesday night from the entire Serbia. It was unclear who paid for their transport, as UN authorities on the other side of the boundary beefed up personnel to speed up the expected mass crossing into Kosovo, local reports said.

The protesting Serbs were displaced since NATO ousted Belgrade's security forces from Kosovo in mid-1999 in order to stop the heavy- handed repression of the majority Kosovo Albanians.

Belgrade officials say that more than 200,000 Serbs fled Kosovo since 1999 under pressure or in fear of reprisals from vengeful Albanians.

The UN delegation, organized on Russia's initiative, was tasked with collecting 'first-hand experience' of conditions in Kosovo before the future status of the province is resolved.

The Albanians want nothing less than independence, while Belgrade offers nothing more than a vague concept of an autonomy and insists on more talks before the UN moves on Kosovo.

But after a year of talks, held in Vienna under mediation of the UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari, failed to bring the unbearably hostile Belgrade and Pristina any closer, neither the Albanians, nor the West, led by the US, see any point in more negotiations.

Washington and the EU, who have poured billions of dollars into maintaining stability in Kosovo, want to implement the plan hammered out by Ahtisaari, which envisages internationally supervised independence for what nominally still is Serbia's province.

Among other things, the economically moribund territory - with a jobless rate of more than 40 per cent - would with it gain access to international lending institutions and earn a shot at foreign investment, western officials say.

Ahtisaari's plan was also backed by NATO, which has led an expensive peace-keeping mission in Kosovo since June 1999.

But Russia, with its veto in the Security Council, backed Belgrade's objections to the plan as biased and forced the UN fact-finding mission before the start of a debate on a new UN resolution on Kosovo's status.

Though it said it wanted Belgrade and Pristina to continue direct talks, Moscow did not explicitly threaten to veto Ahtisaari's plan.

After talks in Belgrade, in Pristina the UN mission would meet the head of the UN administration, Joachim Ruecker, along with other international officials, as well as Kosovo Albanian leaders, including Prime Minister Agim Ceku and President Fatmir Sejdiu.

UN ambassadors would also visit some of the Serb enclaves in Kosovo, including the ethnically divided town of Kosovska Mitrovica and talk to representatives of religious communities, Serbian sources said.

After the Kosovo part of the visit and before the return to New York, the delegation would stop over in Vienna to meet Ahtisaari.

The US ambassador to Belgrade, Michael Polt, was quoted Thursday as saying that the UN Security Council delegation was not put together to launch more talks, but to help forge a new resolution on Kosovo.

'This is not starting new talks, we do not support that,' radio B92 quoted him as saying. 'Kosovo would gain supervised independence by the coming summer.