|
U.N. Unveils Kosovo Self-Government Plan
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, May 15 (News Agencies) - Kosovo's U.N. administrator on Tuesday unveiled his plan to give the Albanian-majority province self-government and a president, 12 years after Slobodan Milosevic stripped it of its autonomy.
Administrator Hans Haekkerup said the framework constitution called for a 120-seat legislative assembly to be formed 30 days after elections, which have been set for November 17th.
He said the plan represented a "significant step forward" for Kosovo, which has been administered by the U.N. since June 1999.
The United Nations hopes that by allowing the Muslim Albanian majority in the province - which is formally part of Serbia - to run its own affairs it will calm the nationalism which lies behind attacks on Kosovo's Serb minority, and which has inspired wars in Macedonia and Serbia.
But the former political chief of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), the group that launched the 1998 rebellion against Serb rule, which led to the Kosovo war, Hashim Thaci, said the text did not go far enough.
"It is in contradiction with the will of the people of Kosovo who want independence," he said, after meeting with administrator Hans Haekkerup to review the plan.
Kosovo's Serb minority is also opposed to what the United Nations describes as the "constitutional framework for a provisional government", fearing anything which distances the Yugoslav province still further from Belgrade.
The provisional constitution would give Kosovo more autonomy than that it was given by Tito's Communist Yugoslav government in 1974, Haekkerup said.
The Serbs' representative on Kosovo's Interim Administrative Council, an embryonic executive that meets under U.N. auspices, Rada Trajkovic, did not join her ethnic Albanian colleagues at the public launch of the plan.
Marko Jaksic, the representative of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia in Kosovo, has already called on Serbs to boycott the U.N.-run legislative elections next November 17th.
Following the elections, the new MPs are to meet to choose a president, who will in turn nominate a prime minister tasked with setting up the first Kosovo government since Milosevic removed the province's autonomy in 1989.
Opposition to Serb rule built up under Milosevic's repressive rule and exploded into rebellion when the KLA launched an armed insurrection.
NATO responded to Milosevic's brutal crackdown with a 78-day air war during which Yugoslav forces drove 800,000 ethnic Albanian refugees out of the province.
In June 1999, a 44,000 strong NATO peacekeeping force was sent into Kosovo after Belgrade capitulated and agreed to withdraw its troops.
The province has since been run as an international protectorate under U.N. administration.
The future status of Kosovo is still undecided, with Muslim Albanians maintaining their demands for independence but with the remaining Serb minority, which has itself become the target for ethnic violence, remaining loyal to Belgrade.
In the meantime, the province has become a breeding ground for violence, as former KLA fighters exported their campaign into the Presevo valley area of southern Serbia and the hills of northern Macedonia.
In both areas the rebels were this week locked in battle with security forces. In Macedonia the fighting is in danger of pushing the fragile republic into civil war.
Meanwhile in Kosovo, the KFOR peacekeeping force is forced to defend Serb areas from attacks from ethnic Albanians who want to drive them from the province. Some 210,000 non-Albanians have fled into Serbia proper since the U.N. took over, according to UNHCR figures.
In such conditions neither community is likely to remain satisfied with the U.N. proposal for long.
Another former KLA leader turned politician, Ramush Haradinaj, made it clear that the he believed autonomy would be a first step towards independence, and that he was "committed to make this provisional period as short as possible".
Thaci, Haradinaj and pacifist leader Ibrahim Rugova, the most likely candidates for the Kosovo presidency, were all present at the launch of the U.N. plan.
Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo won a crushing victory in last year's municipal elections.
Having been "president" of an illegal parallel government before the war, Rugova remains the front-runner to win the election and lead the pro-independence lobby at discussions on Kosovo's final status.
|
