UN rejects EU claims of taking over from UNMIK
The United Nations on Thursday firmly rejected claims that the European Union’s mission began taking over the responsibilities held by UNMIK since 1999, underlining that UN’s mandate in Kosovo could only be changed by the Security Council.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Friday, February 29, 2008
The fate of UNMIK has been a source of controversies in past several weeks as high-ranking officials in Brussels claimed that the newly established EULEX can simply take over the province's administration without previous consent from New York.
"The Secretary-General has told the chief of UNMIK to continue his regular duties," UN spokesman Brendan Varma said.
UN officials, who had been strongly advised not to use phrases such as "transfer of authority", said that UNMIK must remain on the ground and in full capacity, according to the Security Council's Resolution 1244, which presents the only legal framework for the status of Kosovo.
In that sense, UNMIK will continue to fulfill its duties until deeply divided Security Council decides otherwise.
Despite the Western wishes to cancel UNMIK, it will be a rather hard task, simply due to the fact that the UN mission in Kosovo is the only "open ended" mission of the world organization, meaning that UNMIK does not have to go through annual or semi-annual renewals of its mandate, like other UN missions.
Without the unity in Security Council, UNMIK can cease to exist only if the UN General Assembly decides to cut its budget, but that would have to wait at least until late-2009 and the new debate on financing of UN's peacekeeping operations, because the existing budget expires in two years.
The UN Secretary-General has been under large pressure from the EU and United States to give a green light for a transfer of authority from UNMIK to EULEX, but Ban Ki-moon rejected those appeals saying that UN chief simply has no authority to make decisions reserved for the world organizations most powerful body - the Security Council.
