Foreign - Monday 4.8.2003

Harri Holkeri faces big challenges in new Kosovo post

Former Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri faces an extremely difficult task when he takes on his new post as head of the United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) later this month.

    The UN Security Council named Holkeri to the post last Monday.

    Three different leaders have already held this somewhat thankless job in the past four years.

The difficulties are underscored by the fact that none of Holkeri's predecessors - France's Bernard Kouchner, Denmark's Hans Haekkerup, or Germany's Michael Steiner - have stayed in the post for much more than a year.

    The administration of Kosovo was taken over by the UN after the war in 1999. The task of UNMIK has been endless, and none of Holkeri's predecessors left many local friends behind them when they gave up the post.

    "A year and a half in Kosovo sank deep into my bones. At difficult times I would often listen to Mozart's Requiem", said Steiner in an interview with the German newspaper Die Welt in early June.

Die Welt says that Steiner managed to make a few real achievements in Kosovo. The German news magazine Der Spiegel had a much more negative assessment:

    "His opponents described him as a tactless and arrogant diplomat with the air of a Sun King", the magazine wrote in late June.

    If the article by Der Spiegel is anything to go by, it would seem that Holkeri has no way to go but up.

    "We cursed Steiner's predecessors, the madcap Bernard Kouchner, and the stiff Danish bureaucrat Hans Haekkerup", said Serbia's Minister of Justice Vlada Batic in an interview. "But compared with Steiner they were real Mother Teresas."

Filling important administrative posts in the Balkans has become increasingly difficult in recent years. Before taking the Kosovo post Steiner worked as foreign policy adviser to German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. He had to leave his demanding post in late 2001 because of difficulties related to his personality.

    Steiner's final mistake was losing his temper with German soldiers and demanding caviar during a stopover in Moscow in 2001.

    Much earlier he was notorious among foreign correspondents in Berlin for his arrogant attitude.

    Steiner's competence as a diplomat has never been questioned; he was one of Germany's leading diplomats in the early 1990s during efforts to bring peace to the war-torn Balkans.

After leaving Kosovo early this summer Michael Steiner took on the post of Germany's UN Ambassador in Geneva.

    He told Die Welt that he was not at all unhappy with the change.

    "I am happy that I can attend the theatre and concerts again, and swim in an indoor swimming pool."

    The German press seems to have a clear idea about what Harri Holkeri must not do in his new job.

    "Under no circumstances should he try to be a King of Pristina", writes Berliner Zeitung.