U.N. Kosovo governor resigns

Haekkerup wants to spend more time with family

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The U.N. governor of Kosovo, former Danish Defence Minister Hans Haekkerup, announced his resignation for personal reasons on Friday after one year in charge of the southern Yugoslav province.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said he greatly regretted Haekkerup's decision to leave but stressed he respected the move, which came as a surprise for many people in the ethnic Albanian-dominated province and elsewhere in Yugoslavia.

Annan praised Haekkerup, 56, for his work to introduce a substantial degree of self-government in Kosovo, including holding last month's "successful" election of a new 120-seat legislative assembly.

Under under his leadership, significant progress was made in Kosovo, Annan added.

Until a replacement is named, Haekkerup's main deputy, American Charles Brayshaw, will be in charge of the U.N. mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), which has governed the province since NATO's 1999 bombing to halt Serbian repression of its Albanians.

The soft-spoken, bearded Dane replaced Frenchman Bernard Kouchner in January 2001 as the U.N.'s Kosovo administrator.

Haekkerup, whose wife is expecting a child early next year, said he was looking forward to spending more time with his family and said the decision to leave was his.

"It has been a very intensive year," he told Kosovo television RTK. "As (head of the U.N. mission) you are not working eight or ten hours a day, but a little more."

U.N. sources earlier this week denied reports in leading Kosovo dailies that Haekkerup would not return after his winter holiday, saying he was taking a long break and would come back after the expected birth of his child in early February.

Haekkerup played a key role in the political process leading up to Kosovo's first post-war general election on November 17, designed to give it substantial autonomy under a U.N. umbrella.

His office drafted a U.N. blueprint for new provisional institutions paving the way for the polls and also helped persuade leaders in Belgrade to urge minority Serbs to participate in the vote.

"Serving as head of UNMIK has been very interesting and challenging, and it has been possible to move things further than I had initially imagined," Haekkerup said in a statement.

But he was criticised by some Kosovo Albanians for his negotiations with Belgrade and for the way he handled the inaugural session of the new Kosovo assembly on December 10, which was marred by a walkout by the second largest party.

The legislative body has so far failed to elect a Kosovo president and government.

A senior official of Kosovo's main political party, the ethnic Albanian Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK), expressed mixed views about his record.

"We supported Mr Haekkerup's activity at the beginning, but we also strongly rejected some of the documents he signed with Belgrade," LDK official Alush Gashi told Reuters.

"I think Kosovo has entered a phase of stability after the elections and that its prosperity will not depend on individuals regardless of their level of importance," he said.

But Rada Trajkovic, head of the Serb group in the new Kosovo legislature, described Haekkerup as a man of integrity who had roughly accomplished what he had promised.

"I think that it is not good that this happened at this moment. I am sorry he is leaving," she told the Bosnian Serb SRNA news agency.