Nash To Serve as Chief Mitrovica Peacekeeper

Retired U.S. Army Major General William B. Nash, a popular former IOP fellow, will head up the United Nations (U.N.) peacekeeping effort in the volatile Kosovo city of Mitrovica, officials confirmed yesterday.

Nash will be the sixth U.N. appointee to administer the city since the international organization took control after last summer's 78-day NATO bombing campaign.

Nash's appointment has not yet been officially announced by the U.N., though official word is expected within the next few days.

Nash has extensive experience quelling the recent troubles in former Yugoslavia. He commanded the multinational military force that implemented the Dayton Peace Accords in northeastern Bosnia-Herzegovina before retiring from the military in 1998.

After serving as an IOP fellow in the spring of 1998, Nash served as director of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), a non-profit foreign policy think tank.

There, Nash designed command structures for the U.N. and NATO peacekeeping forces in Kosovo, according to Brian R. Smith '02, who worked with Nash at the NDI last summer.

Early this year, state department officials began to consider Nash for the Kosovo rebuilding job.

According to an internal NDI e-mail message sent to staff members, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Richard C. Holbrooke personally asked Nash to serve in Kosovo.

Nash was travelling and not available for comment.

"He definitely knew how he wanted things. He was a man who got things done," Smith said of Nash's leadership skills.

"I think he's going to do a great job," said Dana M. Kupersmith '01, who served as Nash's fellowship adviser at the IOP. "I have great confidence in him."

Nash's Quagmire

Mitrovica, in northern Kosovo, remains divided along ethnic lines--with Serbs in the north and Albanians in the south.

Geopolitical analysts say it is one of the least stable regions in the Balkans.

Just last week, a crowd of Serbs attacked peacekeepers while they cleared Serb forces from an ethnically mixed section of the city.

The peacekeepers dispersed the crowds with tear gas, injuring four people and damaging two police vehicles owned by the U.N. Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK).

Some U.N. administrators believe the continued violence in the city may prevent future peace between the Serbs and Muslims.

"Reconciliation is absolutely impossible," said Bernard Kouchner, head of UNMIK, to the French Communist newspaper L'Humanite on Saturday.

"Who is crazy enough to think that in eight months we could have done what they haven't been able to do in Ireland for 30 years?" continued Kouchner.

Albright defended U.S. involvement in the peacekeeping mission in Mitrovica before a congressional subcommittee last Wednesday.

Albright described the continuing work as "essential."

Her testimony came the same day the Washington Post published excerpts from an internal U.N. report detailing torture, killing, extortion and threats against U.N. peacekeepers committed by the Kosovo Protection Force (KPF).

The U.N. and NATO have been supporting the KPF, a unit composed almost entirely of former Albanian guerillas.

Also on Wednesday, the Post quoted a senior Pentagon official who said that the U.S. might have to fight against the KPF if it continues its efforts in Kosovo.