Holkeri resignation

Holkeri resignation “expected”
B92/AFP - May 25, 2004

PRISTINA -- Tuesday -- The resignation of UN Kosovo mission chief Harri Holkeri was all but inevitable after deadly ethnic violence rocked the troubled province in March, officials in Belgrade said today.

"I think that the departure of Holkeri was something expected" after the anti-Serb riots in March that left 19 dead and more than 900 wounded, said Nebojsa Covic, the Belgrade representative in charge of Kosovo.

Holkeri, a former Finnish prime minister, announced in Helsinki this morning that he had submitted his resignation from the top international post in the southern Serbian province because of ill health.

"Whether it was really due to health reasons doesn’t matter any more," Covic told AFP, adding that he believed it was directly linked to the March unrest.

The authorities in Belgrade as well as international officials and Kosovo's elected leaders lashed out at Holkeri for the UN's failure to stop the two-day rampage by ethnic Albanian extremists against Serb-inhabited enclaves.

Marko Jaksic, a Kosovo Serb official based in the provincial town of Kosovska Mitrovica, said Holkeri's resignation was "something we were hoping for."

"The March violence showed failure of the policies personified by Mr Holkeri, so I think his departure is something good," Jaksic told B92.

However, the Serb community in Kosovo "fears that Holkeri may be succeeded by somebody who will be worse than the previous four administrators," he added