KOSOVO : RULE OF LAW
On the Mark, Raring to Go!
The EU mission set to take over from UN in Kosovo

An assemblage of 2,000 odd European and American constabulary, customs agents, law lords and prosecutors are poised to start work all through Kosovo from the current month. The European Union’s Rule of Law Mission (EULEX) in Kosovo – the Albanian majority region that broke away from Serbia in February this year – is proposed to take over from a UN management that has run the establishments since 1999. Deployment has been deferred in the midst of hostility by Kosovo Serbs and Serbia who perceive the mission as a sign of Kosovo independence that they ferociously discard. "I expect to start EULEX mission Kosovo-wide from the beginning of December," said Yves de Kermabon, the head of EULEX. "I am waiting for the EU to give me the political guidance I need."

However, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon succeeded in roping in Serbia with a six-point plan under which police, customs officers and judges in Serb-run areas of Kosovo would stay under a UN umbrella even as their Albanian corresponding team will work directly with EULEX. However, on the other side of the fence, a number of non-governmental organisations in Pristina said they would oppose the move. The Democratic League of Dardania (DLD) asked for the resignation of Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, citing apprehension that the sketch does not promise the sovereignty of Kosovo.

"The six-point sketch is a product of the international community's duplicity and malfunctioning of the Thaci administration, clearing a technique to Serbia to recover in peace what it lost in war," Behlul Beqaj, a political commentator on Kosovo, told TSI.

It is vague how the mission will be set up in Kosovo Serb areas as 70,000 out of 120,000 Serbs have signed an anti EULEX petition. "We don't know what the dynamics of EULEX deployment will be," said Oliver Ivanovic, a state secretary in Serbia's Kosovo ministry. NATO peacekeeping troops have amplified patrols in Mitrovica, fearing confrontations in the flashpoint town where Serbs live on one half of the river and Albanian Kosovars on the other. Numerous Western nations have accepted Kosovo but Serbia, backed by Russia, has declined to do so. The Security Council has long been at odds over the prospect of Kosovo and this mission is the first time the 15-nation body have been successful on agreeing on anything since the independence declaration.

TSI Edit Bureau