UNMIK/FR/0046/01
FEATURE RELEASE - June 22, 2001

The UN Security Council Visit to Kosovo
By Susan Manuel,

The recent visit by the United Nations Security Council to Kosovo was short but intense.

The 15 ambassadors, led by Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh, saw little of the countryside and met few if any ordinary residents. Mostly they spent countless hours listening to the representatives of Kosovo's parties and communities, as well as from UNMIK and KFOR, on how Kosovo is doing, how the people of Kosovo are progressing towards a democratic way of life and how UNMIK is fulfilling its mandate.
In the end, both UNMIK officials and the Security Council delegates judged the visit to have been productive:
"It was very useful in trying to achieve our objectives," SRSG Hans Haekkerup told media upon his return from Belgrade where he had accompanied the Council for a one-day visit.
Some members of the delegation had been to Kosovo a year ago, on a longer visit by fewer ambassadors. This time they got only snapshots through bus windows, but those who had returned were impressed with the proliferation of construction and new shops.
From those views and from the briefings-at least those by Kosovo Albanians and UNMIK officials-Council members concluded that progress had been made towards "normalization." The great exceptions remained security, freedom of movement and life in general for Kosovo's Serbs.

"A minus on interethnic relations", was how one local newspaper headlined the Security Council's conclusions on the brief visit here.
The visits to Kosovo, this year and last, are part of a new direction for the Security Council, which rarely ventures out of the UN Headquarters in New York. Recently members have insisted that they see the missions -- which they have created -- on the ground.
Under the United Nations Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. It has 15 members, five of whom are permanent: China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States. The other 10 members are elected by the General Assembly for two-year terms-they are currently Bangladesh, Colombia, Ireland, Jamaica, Mali, Mauritius, Norway, Singapore, Tunisia and Ukraine.

Last weekend's trip to Kosovo was the first time all 15 members traveled together.

The mission's messages were crafted and broadcast in New York, even before their arrival in Kosovo: these were to urge Kosovo Serb participation in elections, to get all Kosovo leaders to reject violence, to condemn extremist and terrorist activities, to promote interethnic reconciliation and to support implementation of Security Council resolution 1244.
These messages were repeated in meetings with the FRY Committee for relations with UNMIK, the Interim Administrative Council/Kosovo Transitional Council, and with representatives of the Albanian and Serb communities in Mitrovica.
But even in a highly scripted visit such as this surprises were at hand. For UNMIK, the weekend spent dealing with unexpected events and the various wishes of 15 highly individual individuals was a logistical test of the highest order.
An UNMIK Police officer from Bangladesh, for example, had died the day before the delegation arrived. Told of the death when he reached Kosovo, Ambassador Chowdhury decided that he would attend the memorial service on Sunday. This was to be made impossible by another surprise: the arrival of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The other news the delegation received upon landing at Slatina Airport on Saturday was that the venue for the first meetings had changed to KFOR, due to the demonstrations said to be surrounding the UNMIK Government building.
But while UNMIK officials scurried to make new arrangements, the Security Council decided otherwise. They held an impromptu session in the office of the airport manager and decided that they would meet the demonstrators themselves, right away, at Government building, to hear their views on the issues of the missing and detained.
Calls were made and security re-routed, but the demonstrations had dispersed by the time the buses reached the Government building. An appointment was arranged with a delegation from the committee for former detainees the next day.
As difficult as the day proved to be, one of UNMIK's key messages-that the matter of the missing and detained be addressed-was thus delivered.

So, Saturday afternoon, the ambassadors settled around the huge conference table in UNMIK's third floor for the planned formal briefings-first with UNMIK and then with the FRY Committee for Relations with UNMIK. Having traveled overnight from New York, the delegates were clearly becoming frayed.  But none wanted to interrupt the questions and answers, which continued for some four hours.
Meetings with UNMIK stressed the Constitutional Framework and the creation of Pillar One-"Police and Justice." In fact, law and order was to be a central theme of the visit, from UNMIK's point of view.
Police could point proudly to the recent seizure of a huge weapons cache, hidden in a truck carrying lumber, which was apprehended outside Pejė/Pec on the previous week. But more resources were needed for the police and justice system to expand on their recent successes. That's why a visit to Dubrava prison had been scheduled for Sunday--to impress upon the Security Council the need for donor assistance to the law enforcement system.

In an unintended way, the first meetings with Serb representatives underscored the point. Flanked by legal experts Dusan Celic and Alexander Simic, Momcilo Trajkovic presented his views on the unsatisfactory situation of Kosovo Serbs. Simic and Celic, who had worked on the drafting of the Constitutional Framework, expressed their views that the document failed to provided much-needed legal protection for non-Albanians.
But the perhaps the most graphic statement was the simplest, when Alexander Simic said that he could not visit the place of his upbringing, just down the street from the Government building. The fact that all three Serbs had to be brought to UNMIK Government Building in armoured vehicles, with armed guards always at their sides, was a situation which has become "normal" in Pristina, but clearly shocked the Security Council members.
This contrast between evident progress toward normalization on the one hand, and the lack of movement in "normalizing" the lives of Kosovo Serbs continued to be expressed in the events that followed.
In a change from last year's Security Council visit, the Mitrovica meetings with Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs were held separately.
There, Kosovo Albanian leaders, for example, cited unemployment as a major problem. The municipal assembly was functioning well, they said, but no Kosovo Serb had arrived to take up one of the 11 seats allotted them.
"Serbs are taken as wild animals to assembly meetings," Marko Jaksic told the delegation. "The security situation is humiliating."
The  "unexpected" visit of Russian Federation President Putin, whose Kosovo plan was not announced for security reasons, on Sunday afternoon added a new dimension to the same, very complicated story.
Flown and bused to the Russian contingent headquarters near the airport, the Council members and various UNMIK officials sat behind desks in what appeared to be a school classroom, while President Putin, his chief of staff, and a few generals sat at the front lectern.

Back in New York, Ambassador Chowdhury has officially described the talks as "a fruitful exchange on a wide range of pertinent issues in the region".
The media, however, has captured another essence of the Russian President's message-delivered in Kosovo as well as in Belgrade - that is his charge that Kosovo and its Albanians are the source of all ills in the region.
Not mentioned in the media were President Putin's appreciations of the complexity of the UNMIK mission. Nor was his stated wish for closer cooperation on implementing Resolution 1244 and bringing stability to the region.
While conceding that the prevalence of interethnic hatred remained UNMIK's greatest failure, SRSG Hans Haekkerup gave President Putin a detailed explanation of UNMIK's work and the current situation, without laying blame on a particular community. He stressed the importance of Serb return and Serb participation, as well as the advances in controlling borders and boundaries and curtailing the movement of extremists. A day later in Belgrade, Mr Haekkerup refuted charges by both the Russian and Yugoslav presidents that Kosovo was to blame for the crime and instability in the region.
Upon their return, the Security Council assessed that "UNMIK and KFOR were deeply engaged in addressing the volatile situation".
The situation in Kosovo was complex, they stated, and the process of implementing 1244 "complicated", while UNMIK's task was "momentous".

The visit seems to have ensured that Kosovo will remain a high priority  for the United Nations-because of  progress made as well as the problems which persist.
"UNMIK has now reached a critical stage in the implementation of its mandate, and continued effectiveness requires a major effort on its part and by its police and KFOR, backed up by close attention from the Security Council, and the sustained input of resources from the international community."
This was the conclusion of the 4331st meeting of the Security Council, held on 19 June 2001.

Note for editors
The full document may be consulted online in English at http://www.unmik.org/. Albanian and Serbian versions can be provided.

For a selection of photographs, please contact Mr Ky Chung at 038 504-604 ext. 5467