UN envoy warns new Kosovo assembly that safeguarding minority rights is vital

Declaring the next 12 months crucial in determining the future of Kosovo as it moves towards talks on its final status, the United Nations administrator of the ethnically divided province warned the newly elected parliament today that he would use sanctions against any officials who stood in the way of improving minority rights.

“The Provisional Institutions must reach out to the larger public, listen to their concerns, and act upon them,” Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Representative Søren Jessen-Petersen said, referring to the self-governing authority to which the UN has been transferring a growing number of responsibilities.

Kosovo has been under UN administration since 1999 when the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) drove mainly Serbian Yugoslav troops out amid fighting between the province’s majority Albanians and minority Serbs.

“Indeed, standards require that the legislative process should accommodate the concerns and opinions of all of Kosovo’s communities,” Mr. Jessen-Petersen said of the eight necessary goals established for deciding final status, such as building democratic institutions, enforcing minority rights, creating a functioning economy and establishing an impartial legal system.

He told the legislature, elected in October in a poll with very little Serb participation, that he was fully prepared to use all tools and measures at his disposal to actively enforce the accountability of the self-governing authority.

“These tools include strong monitoring and oversight but also eventual sanctions,” he said. “I am prepared to challenge officials who fail to carry out their duties responsibly, or who block attempts to make improvements in key areas such as minority rights, freedom of movement, returns of displaced persons, equal provision of services, responsible media, and security.”

Mr. Jessen-Petersen appreciated the important progress made by the outgoing government in the recovery from the “terrible violence” of March, the worst in five years of UN administration, when an onslaught by Albanian extremists to drive out Serb, Roma and Askhali communities led to 19 people being killed, nearly 1,000 injured and hundreds of homes and centuries-old Serbian cultural sites razed or burned.

Noting that Serb participation in the elections was regrettably low, he said there was still room for the active participation of all Kosovo’s communities in the assembly presidency and committees.

And he stressed that implementation of standards must be a priority throughout the next months, in order to ensure that sufficient progress is made prior to a comprehensive assessment of conditions planned for mid-2005. The assembly will play a key role in passing legislation vital to the fulfilment of the standards, he said.