Kosovo raises concern over UN staff role 

By Eric Jansson 
September 16 2005
Financial Times
Original Source: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/82c34ce4-2622-11da-a4a7-00000e2511c8.html
Government officials in Serbia’s breakaway province of Kosovo on Thursday said they were increasingly concerned about allegations that United Nations personnel working in the province had a hand in “human-smuggling” rings.
Avni Arifi, senior adviser to Bajram Kosumi, the Kosovo prime minister, said he believed the arrests of three UN police officers three weeks ago for alleged involvement in illegal trafficking of individuals across borders were “not isolated cases”.
“There are probably other cases, too,” Mr Arifi told the Financial Times, citing the arrest last year of a Kosovo-based administrator for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, accused of running a sex trafficking ring. Mr Arifi added that “several” other cases had been dealt with quietly by Kosovo’s UN mission, UNMIK, in recent years.
However, little is known about each case, because UN police refuse to release details of suspects and UN personnel operate in Kosovo with blanket immunity from criminal prosecution, to the dismay of local human rights lawyers.
The UN Police in Kosovo on Thursday was unable to provide a figure of how many UN employees in the province had been arrested in cross-border human smuggling and sex trafficking cases since UNMIK’s establishment in 1999.
Government officials said they had been told that those arrested, like the UNHCR official last year, were Pakistani nationals. The comments from Mr Arifi, privately echoed by other government aides in Pristina, come at a sensitive moment for the UN, as presidents and prime ministers from around the world have gathered in New York to debate and shape the organisation’s future.
One issue dogging the organisation is how best to order, command and administrate future interventions in conflict and post-conflict zones. The UN wields broader powers in Kosovo than in any other post-conflict zone. Many of the leaders at this week’s UN summit, including Tony Blair, the British prime minister, have frequently cited international action there as a success, despite the controversies surrounding it.
A bombing campaign by Nato in 1999 pushed Serb troops out of the predominantly ethnic-Albanian province, clearing the way for UN rule and Nato occupation. Talks on Kosovo’s possible independence from Serbia could begin later this year, if the UN Security Council gives a green light.
However, before such talks begin, Mr Kosumi, prime minister in an elected government that operates under close UN supervision, has asked the UN to acknowledge its “failure” to police Kosovo effectively by handing over law enforcement and court powers to his government – a suggestion Serb leaders in Belgrade oppose. “Unfortunately we do not have exact data about human trafficking here. But I can say that the citizens of Kosovo do not trust UNMIK’s structures in some fields,” Mr Kosumi said.