U.N. Prepares for Lead Role in Peace Effort

After weeks in the wings, the United Nations is moving toward center stage in intensive diplomatic efforts to bring peace to Kosovo.

Members of the Security Council could vote as soon as next week on a resolution that would lay the groundwork for administering postwar Kosovo. Foreign ministers from the Group of 8, which consists of Russia and seven major Western powers, requested the U.N. resolution Thursday as part of a framework for ending the conflict in Yugoslavia.

As early as today, the council is expected to approve a humanitarian resolution condemning the escalating refugee catastrophe in the Balkans and calling for safe passage in Kosovo and elsewhere in Yugoslavia for relief workers seeking to help people displaced by the fighting.

“The U.N. is getting its act together because its member states are agreeing to work together,” said Jeremy Greenstock, the U.N. ambassador from Britain. “We always intended we should come back to the United Nations.”

The broad principles outlined by the Group of 8 on Thursday resemble what top U.N. staffers have been developing for weeks, diplomats said. “The proposal is quite similar to what the secretary-general [Kofi Annan] presented to the Security Council earlier in the week,” said Chen Ranfeng, a spokesman for the Chinese delegation to the U.N.

A task force headed by Alvaro de Soto, assistant secretary-general for political affairs, has been working daily on a blueprint for reconstruction of postwar Kosovo, which is a province of Serbia, the larger of Yugoslavia’s two republics.

The U.N. contingency plan under discussion includes establishment of an interim administration to help run the province, the safe return of refugees driven from Kosovo by Yugoslav forces, reconstruction of roads and other infrastructure, and eventual political autonomy for Kosovo. The province’s ethnic Albanians, who made up 90% of Kosovo’s 2 million people before NATO began airstrikes March 24, have been dominated by Yugoslavia’s ruling Serbs since losing a degree of political autonomy in 1989.

Under the U.N. contingency plan, different responsibilities in Kosovo would be apportioned among several world agencies, top diplomats said. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe would handle setting up elections and other civil institutions. The European Union would handle stabilization of economies in the Balkans and reconstruction of Yugoslav roads and other infrastructure. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees would oversee the safe and free return of the hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians driven from their homes.

One proposal calls for a U.N. special representative approved by the Security Council to serve as temporary administrator, with wide-ranging powers to oversee Kosovo. But Greenstock said there are fears that the Yugoslav government will object to an outside “governor.”

The British ambassador said such an administration might have to be done by committee.

Secretary-General Annan is close to naming two special envoys for eventual Kosovo peace negotiations and is scheduled to meet in Washington today with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Responding Thursday to a question from a reporter, Annan spokesman Fred Eckhard declined to rule out a meeting between the secretary-general and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

“He’s always said that he would do what was needed to move the process along,” Eckhard said of Annan. “But any such meeting would have to be carefully prepared. . . . The time for such a meeting is not now.”

Diplomats stressed that many details of the U.N. contingency plan still need to be worked out. And the biggest question mark remains Milosevic.

“We have no evidence of a sensible response from Belgrade yet,” Greenstock said. The real significance of Thursday’s Group of 8 meeting, he said, “is the Russians and NATO countries working together. This is a useful first step.”