A poor choice in Kosovo

International Herald Tribune ^ | Monday, December 20, 2004

[Jane_N]

Five years since international administrators took control of Kosovo, the situation in the badly bloodied Balkan province remains intractable. The choice of a new prime minister illustrates some of the reasons why: Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla leader, was questioned by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia only a couple of weeks before he was picked to lead Kosovo's government and may soon be indicted for war crimes. If the Kosovars want to show that they can run an independent country in which the Serbian minority would be safe, this is a bad way to do it. Yet the president of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova, went ahead and forged a political alliance with Haradinaj, and the United Nations administrator of Kosovo, Soren Jessen-Petersen, did not block it.

It is hardly likely that the Serbian minority in Kosovo, or the Serbian government in Belgrade, will have anything to do with Haradinaj, whom they accuse of committing atrocities in the Decani region of western Kosovo as a commander there of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the guerrilla army that battled Serbian forces in the late 1990s. Haradinaj has denied any wrongdoing, but KLA guerrillas were reportedly responsible for killing Serbs and Albanians suspected of collaborating with Serbian rule...

Now, whatever hopes the United Nations had of starting talks on Kosovo's future next year are effectively stalled. If Haradinaj is indicted, the problem will get worse: Kosovar Albanians who voted for him will be enraged. Yet the alternative - shelving a potential indictment because the target is prime minister - would weaken the credibility of the International Tribunal. The chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, has promised new indictments by year's end, but she has not indicated whether Haradinaj is among them.

[ehoxha]

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