RADIO FREE EUROPE/RADIO LIBERTY, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC
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RFE/RL NEWSLINE Vol. 8, No. 159, Part II, 20 August 2004

U.S. WANTS MORE RESPONSIBILITIES FOR KOSOVA'S OWN INSTITUTIONS.
Philip Goldberg, who is Washington's new chief of mission in Kosova,
said in Prishtina on 19 August that the United States has a special
role to play in Kosova, RFE/RL's South Slavic and Albanian Languages
Service reported (see "RFE/RL Balkan Report," 9 and 29 July 2004). He
stressed that Soeren Jessen-Petersen, who is the new head of the UN
civilian administration in Kosova (UNMIK), has the support of the
United States in carrying out his "ambitious agenda" at what is a
time of hope in Kosova (see "RFE/RL Newsline," 16, 17, and 18 August
2004). Goldberg called for more responsibilities to be transferred to
Kosova's own institutions, noting that the United States also
supports a multiethnic society in the province. PM

UN AGENCY DEFENDS ROLE IN PRIVATIZATION IN KOSOVA... Responding to
widespread criticism from Kosova's ethnic Albanian majority and some
foreign NGOs that the privatization process supervised by the UNMIK
and the EU has been badly handled, Katja Wallrafen, a spokeswoman for
the UN mission department in charge of reconstruction and economic
affairs there, told RFE/RL on 19 August that the UN-run Kosovo Trust
Agency is moving forward with a third round of privatization and is
preparing for a fourth round (see "RFE/RL Balkan Report," 20 August
2004). There is a 15 September deadline for bidding in the third
round on 13 companies, including a large metallurgical complex,
printing plants, and a bottling plant. The UN agency had suspended
the privatization process after two rounds in October 2003 because of
concerns about its legality. The privatization process is complicated
by the unresolved status of Kosova. RM/PM

...WHILE CRITICISM CONTINUES. Daniel Serwer, a Balkans expert at the
U.S. Institute for Peace, recently told RFE/RL that, regardless of
the Kosova status question, the provisional institutions of
self-government should be put in charge of the privatization process,
RFE/RL reported on 19 August. On 2 August, "The Wall Street Journal
in Europe" ran an article critical of the UN's performance in Kosova
entitled "Balkan Mire," noting that Germany's Count Nikolaus
Lamsdorff, who heads the EU's economic "pillar" of UNMIK, has been
"wary of experts paid by the U.S. government, whom he termed 'hired
guns.'" The article suggested that the UN and EU economic project in
Kosova has been characterized by incompetence, corruption, cronyism,
confusion, and a tendency to elbow Americans out (see "RFE/RL Balkan
Report," 5 March and 29 July 2004). RM/PM