 The head of the United Nations administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), Danish diplomat, Soren Jessen Petersen on Friday ended his mandate in the breakaway province pledging he would return when Kosovo's "dream became reality." Petersen, who has spent the past two years running the province, made it clear that he was referring to the independence of Kosovo- sought by most of the province's ethnic Albanian majority but opposed by Belgrade and the tiny Serbian minority.
| That doesn't really sound even-handed. |
Ethnic Albanian leaders in the province praised Jessen Petersen's achievements, while Serbs accused him of lobbying for the ethnic Albanian cause.
| ... rather than being an honest broker... |
Petersen said he was confident that the international community would decide on Kosovo's final status before the end of this year, despite six rounds of technical talks between the Serbian government and ethnic Albanians having so far yielded no results. UN-brokered talks between the two sides have resumed in Vienna. "We can't keep Kosovo in the present situation, the talks have started and everything must end by determining the status," said Petersen. "I think that it's essentially important for the status to be determined this year and it should be acceptable to the majority, taking into account the wishes of the minority," Petersen said. "I will return when your dream becomes reality," he told ethnic Albanian deputies in a farewell address at the Kosovo parliament on Thursday.
Petersen also visited representatives of the Kosovo minority Serbs, but unlike his predecessors, didn't pay a farewell visit to Serbian leaders in Belgrade, president Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica. At a final press conference in Pristina, Petersen said he did not expect to see an exodus of the remaining 100,000 Serbs from Kosovo if the province became independent. "I've talked to many of them and they have said they want to live here, where they were born," he said.
| I'm not real impressed — and I don't feel a lot of sympathy for the Serbs under normal circumstances. If you're going to function as a neutral party, you can't overtly tilt one way or the other regardless of where your sympathies lie. |
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