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Kosovo’s Future Embassies Face Cash-strapped Fate

01 05 2007  Kosovo worries where the money and staff will come from to run 14 ambassadors abroad.

By Krenar Gashi in Pristina

Kosovo is planning to open at least 14 embassies around the world as soon as it obtains the internationally supervised independence foreseen in the UN plan for the territory, sources in the prime minister’s office have told Balkan Insight.

Beside the UN and the EU, Kosovo intends to send ambassadors to the US, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Albania, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovenia.

“All the preparations have been completed,” said one source. If the UN Security Council adopts the final status plan for the territory this summer – and Russia does not use its veto – Kosovo embassies should be up and running early in 2008 along with a new ministry of foreign affairs.

But Russia’s hostility towards the final status plan is not the only threat to the existence of the new embassies.

Even if Kosovo obtains its independence smoothly, lack of money and of a professional elite mean the business of establishing embassies will be problematic.

Kosovo has no history of independent statehood and no experience of conducting foreign affairs. Part of the Ottoman Empire for several centuries, it was incorporated into Serbia in 1912 and became part of Yugoslavia after the First World War.

After the Second World War, it got its first taste of self-government as a Yugoslav autonomous province. In that period, some Kosovo Albanians gained diplomatic experience while working in Yugoslavia’s many embassies.

But that ended when Serbia’s leader, Slobodan Milosevic, scrapped Kosovo’s autonomy in 1989 and the Yugoslav state itself dissolved soon afterwards.

Since 1999, Kosovo has been a de facto international protectorate, administrated by the UN mission, UNMIK. The UN regime has slowly transferred competences to a local body, the Provisional Institutions of Self Government, PISG.

These have gained power over local administration, culture and education.
But UN Security Council resolution 1244 on Kosovo, which established UNMIK, left it no space to develop a would-be foreign ministry. Thus, there are no competences to be transferred in this field.

As a result, a special body tasked by the prime minister, Agim Ceku, with coordinating the transition period has handled the development of a new foreign ministry among other matters.

Avni Arifi, head of the transition team, told Balkan Insight that the team was working hard to recruit young professionals to help run the new state.
“We have set up groups consisting exclusively of young, western-educated people, that are dealing with the transition tasks,” said Arifi.

Sources within this team claim they have accomplished most of the tasks regarding the creation of a ministry of foreign affairs, too.

“We are done with the technical preparations… we have highlighted the facilities and prepared all the legislation that needs to be adopted or changed,” said one insider.

All the draft laws regarding a ministry of foreign affairs have been drawn up and only need formal approval from Kosovo’s assembly to become applicable.

Another source within the office of the prime minister said European officials were helping to ensure all the laws on the issue were in accordance with international norms.

“The preparation activities are being coordinated with the EU Planning Team in Kosovo, EUPT,” said this source.

But there is still the hard question of where the budget to run a foreign ministry will come from.

Kosovo’s economy barely functions and the territory is highly dependent on foreign aid. Officials work within tight constraints and one source had told Balkan Insight that the new foreign ministry will be expected to work on a budget for the first year of only seven million euro.

This means Kosovo’s diplomats will be the region’s poorest. Indeed, it is hard to see how renting 14 sites in expensive foreign capitals – and paying the staff to run them – can be squared with such a small sum.

The British foreign office’s annual budget, by comparison, is approximately
£1.1 billion (1.6 billion euro).

Beside money, human resources are also in short supply. According to the prime minister’s office, the government has contacted the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, the graduate school of international relations, with a view to training Kosovo’s future diplomatic staff. Of about 30 trainees, “fifteen will be selected as ambassadors”, said a source.

But Lulzim Peci, head of Kosovar Institute for Research and Policy Development, KIPRED, and an international relations expert, doubts a quick course in Vienna will be sufficient.

“A few months of training in the Vienna Academy will not be enough,’ he said. “That can give you some basic theoretical knowledge but in practice these people will have to deal with real diplomacy.”

Peci raised another concern, which is that Kosovo’s culture of corruption and nepotism could soon spread to the new foreign ministry and result in poor appointments.

He fears political parties will send their own people onto the diplomatic missions rather than leaving the work to professionals.

“The selection process of the diplomatic staff should be done by strict criteria and absolutely transparent,” maintained Peci.


Krenar Gashi is BIRN Kosovo editor. Balkan Insight is BIRN’s online publication.