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UN to Resume Kosovo Privatisation |
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2004-06-16 12:01:58 |
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The United Nations says it has decided to resume the stalled privatisation process in Kosovo seen as crucial to the impoverished province's post-war recovery.
"We have the green light to launch the third wave, to continue the privatisation process," Nikolaus Lambsdorff, the head of the European Union wing of the UN's Kosovo mission, told a news conference yesterday, Reuters reported.
The privatisation process was suspended after two rounds last October when concerns were raised about its legality. The Kosovo government described the move as "disastrous" and threatened to quit the Kosovo Trust Agency, an EU-controlled body of local and international officials in charge of the process.
The suspension was widely seen as indicative of the UN's failure to revive Kosovo's economy, five years after it took control of the Serbian province.
One influential think-tank said it "produced a groundswell of bitterness" among Kosovo's independence-seeking Albanian majority which erupted in a wave of rioting in March, directed both against the Serb minority and the United Nations mission.
UN officials, however, warned the procedure was open to abuse such as collusion between bidders and insisted it be reviewed by their headquarters in New York.
Lambsdorff said the UN had agreed to certain "minor changes necessary to ensure a transparent and clean process."
They include giving the Kosovo Trust Agency power to negotiate with potential buyers in order to identify the best bid, as well as introducing a second round of bidding to prevent collusion. He did not say when the process would be started again.
Kosovo's interim government said it would meet on Wednesday to consider its response. The government "wants to see concrete results," a spokeswoman told Reuters, adding that it remained "sceptical."
Since May 2003, the agency has privatised only 16 from a list of 500 socially-owned companies, a unique corporate model of old socialist Yugoslavia.
Bowing to local criticism, the UN two months ago dismissed the head of the agency, Marie Fucci. It has yet to name a successor.
Most of the proceeds of the privatisation process are placed in trust, until the UN rules on the final status of Kosovo. Albanians, who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's two million people, want independence, but Serbs say it must remain part of Serbia and Montenegro.
/Source: Reuters/
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seeurope.net |
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