The London Telegraph reports this morning that UN chief Kofi Annan has taken a break from his normal duties promoting nepotism and dodging investigators to review the status of Kosovo, the region that has existed in a UN-protectorate limbo for over six years now. The status of the province has remained suspended in mystery while UN forces have occupied it since 1999 without lifting a finger to determine its final political resolution. Now Annan says that the UN might sponsor negotiations on Kosovo's final status ... real soon:

Talks on the future of Kosovo, including the prospect of independence for the former province of Serbia, are to begin in the near future, despite Nato's failure fully to pacify the region.

Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, said yesterday that he would ask the Security Council to authorise negotiations "very soon".

He is to appoint a special negotiator - rumoured to be the former Finnish president, Martti Ahtisaari, who brokered the end of the 1999 Kosovo war.

The UN took over Kosovo after NATO kicked the Serbs out in 1999 as part of the containment and eventual toppling of Slobodan Milosevic for his policies of "ethnic cleansing" against various minorities in what was formerly Yugoslavia. Despite the Left's insistence that the UN has the only mandate to enforce international agreements and stop genocide, Kosovo has long provided an example of why the UN has no capability of doing the job. It went into the ethnically Albanian province with little understanding of the politics involved, no willingness to return fire -- NATO had to take over the military aspects of occupation -- and no political plan for victory. We've seen nothing but an endless occupation and actions only designed to support the status quo; no one at the UN even had an idea whether Kosovo should remain part of the country whose forces it kicked out, or should instead get independence.

Contrast that with the so-called "planless" Iraq War staged by the Coalition in 2003. Both actions removed genocidal nutcases from power, but the Coalition did so directly and quickly. Within a year, sovereignty was returned to the Iraqi people. Elections for a new national assembly successfully took place seven months afterwards, and now we have a constitutional plebescite and a second round of national elections taking place in the next three months.

It took the Coalition less than three years to destroy Saddam Hussein's government and grip on power, establish a democracy, transform the population from a fear-gripped set of victims to a courageous electorate, start the rebuilding of a security force answerable to civilian control, and hold two national elections.

In over six years in a much-less volatile Kosovo, what has the UN done to resolve its status? Absolutely nothing.

But maybe they'll hold a meeting to talk about it.

Very soon.

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» UN to have a meeting about the meeting about Kosovo from Strange Women Lying in Ponds
I heard this story on the radio, yesterday, and I certainly shared Captain Ed's reaction. The UN couldn't put together a ham on rye sandwich. But it is very good at meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. [Read More]

Tracked on October 8, 2005 11:26 AM