By Edith M. Lederer
Associated PressJuly 22, 1999
United Nations - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had a message Thursday for US critics who complain that the United Nations is moving too slowly in Kosovo: ''We should focus on the work at hand rather than finger-pointing.''
Annan also endorsed comments made Wednesday by his aide, John Ruggie, who said the United Nations was moving with unprecedented speed and that the NATO-led military force is responsible for ensuring public safety. ''We are going ahead deploying the police and the civilian staff as quickly as we can,'' Annan said. ''So I am reasonably satisfied with the way things are going.''
Ruggie insisted Wednesday that the United Nations was never expected to have an international police force on the ground and a civilian administration up and running in just six weeks. ''That would have been humanly impossible,'' he said.
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, complained to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the NATO-led Kosovo Force, KFOR, was being called on to fill too many roles from policing to civil administration and judicial jobs. ''We need to put as much pressure as possible on the UN to do more to get in there more quickly to get these institutions up and running,'' Cohen said.
Ruggie said the UN Security Council resolution ending the Kosovo conflict envisioned that KFOR would be responsible for security and administration in Kosovo in the initial postwar period. Ruggie said the United Nations is doing exactly what the Security Council expected when it gave the world body responsibility for running the civilian administration and building a new government and economy in Kosovo: It is getting ''up and running.''
''We have a superb working relationship with KFOR on the ground,'' he said. ''We have had no problems, whatsoever, of any magnitude.''
