Two presidents, a presidency, a prime minister and an assembly, but not a country? As Kosovo’s majority Albanian population prepares for the election of ‘provisional institutions of self- government’ on November 17 – and Serbia cozies up to the international community – the paper-thin compromise that saw the United Nations follow NATO into Kosovo is likely to become a permanent substitute for a solution.
In one of his final speeches as head of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Bernard Kouchner likened the job to being in Alice’s Wonderland. It takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place, he observed – if you want to get somewhere else, you have to run at least twice as fast.
