The recent election of Ramush Haradinaj as Kosovo's prime minister could create more wounds than potentially heal, reports Adisa Busuladzic from Sarajevo The October elections in the United Nations-administered former Yugoslav province of Kosovo left no political party with a clear majority. As a result, the dominant party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) -- led by Kosovo's current President Ibrahim Rugova -- formed a coalition with a smaller party, the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK) -- led by former rebel leader Ramush Haradinaj. Central to the deal was the appointment of Haradinaj to the office of Kosovan prime minister. Haradinaj's appointment annoyed the Serbian government who accused him of war crimes committed against Serbian civilians during the 1998-1999 Kosovan war. As a result, Belgrade made an appeal to the UN Mission in Kosovo to remove Haradinaj from his position. Living in Switzerland when his two brothers were killed fighting the Serbs, Haradinaj returned to Kosovo to join the rebellion. Through his actions, he worked his way up to the position of chief commander in the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Western Kosovo and is now considered a war-hero by nearly all Albanians -- both moderates and radicals. However, during the conflict he opposed Rugova whose non-violent stance he labelled as treason. Thus, his recent governmental coalition with Rugova's LDK is viewed as a big political success among the representatives of the UN administration in Kosovo. Therefore, the UN flatly refused the Serbian government's appeal for Haradinaj's removal from office. Still, the possibility that the new Kosovan prime minister could soon be indicted by the International War Crime Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, continues to be raised in the Balkan media. Speculation about Haradinaj's indictment was heightened recently by his summons to The Hague for discussions. In addition, his appointment to the post of Kosovan prime minister coincided with the public announcement of The Hague Tribunal's Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte that the Tribunal would deliver eight to 10 more indictments before the end of this year. This statement was in turn a result of strong pressure from the United States and other key UN Security Council members who insist that the Tribunal should conclude all investigations and deliver all new indictments by the end of 2004. In response to speculations about Haradinaj's immanent indictment, former US ambassador to Bosnia and Yugoslavia, William Mongomery -- who recently started writing a weekly political commentary for the Croatian Jutarnji List and the Bosnian Dnevni Avaztwo, two of the most popular Balkan dailies -- wrote last week that, although "Haradinaj's indictment would be a logical result of one of the Tribunal's basic working assumptions: that all the wartime leaders of the former Yugoslavia were war criminals and it was their job to find evidence to prove it... investigating Kosovan Albanians for war crimes has been far more difficult than any other of her cases, because... in Carla Del Ponte's own words, she and her investigators found it extremely difficult to get the information and intelligence they needed on the wartime activities of the KLA from the key members of the UN Security Council and NATO in a position to be helpful." In explaining this, Mongomery admits that among the representatives of the International Community in Kosovo there has always been an unspoken fear of repercussions in Kosovo should indictments of senior KLA figures take place. Mongomery quoted the former head of the UN administration in Kosovo, Michael Steiner, who said that if indictments were issued against Thaci -- another former rebel leader and the president of the Democratic Party of Kosovo (PDK), Kosovo's second-largest ethnic Albanian party -- and Haradinaj, "we all might as well pack our bags and go home." Although Del Ponte loves to say that she is above politics and simply goes where the evidence takes her, it is very likely that, in the case of Haradinaj, she will never get that far. Western governments involved in the UN administration in Kosovo are well aware that indicting Haradinaj has the potential to inflame Kosovo and provoke another outburst of violence against the international community and the remaining groups of Serbs and other ethnic minorities. This, in turn, could derail plans for the consideration of Kosovo's final status which is scheduled to begin next year. Consequently, it would make it much harder for the US in particular to withdraw its troops from Kosovo -- something the Bush administration seems determined to do. Although some Western observers have accused Haradinaj of wanting to be prime minister simply in order to gain a potential immunity from prosecution, now that he actually holds Kosovan premiership, he will, undoubtedly, be considered a key player in the final status talks with Serbia. Consequently, the Serbian government might try to use an indictment against Haradinaj as an excuse not to hold the talks -- something they have been trying to indefinitely postpone ever since NATO snatched Kosovo from Serbia and Montenegro in the spring of 1999.
