The foreign ministers remain divided over the question of the role of the Kosovo Liberation Army, with the U.S. pushing for the insurgent army to have a role in the territorys police and political administration, while Canada and other countries urged the U.N. to avoid allowing the KLA to "usurp authority in Kosovo." Rebuilding Serbia also remains a point of contention, with Annan arguing forcefully for a broad definition of humanitarian aid, while the U.S. seeks to limit assistance to Belgrade while Slobodan Milosevic remains in power. "Kofi Annan will push hard against denying aid to Serbia because common sense dictates that the region wont be stabilized without it," says Dowell. "And strangling Serbia may actually slow the emergence of an alternative to Milosevic." On one point of contention, though, a consensus is emerging: Even countries whose own cops are unarmed appear to accept that policing Kosovo will take more than a billy club and a whistle.
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If you know a flatfoot who might like to walk the streets of Pristina, give Kofi Annan a call. The U.N. secretary general convened an urgent meeting of 18 foreign ministers Wednesday to plan for reconstruction in Kosovo, and appealed for member countries to supply personnel for a civilian police force for the beleaguered province. "The military isnt trained to keep the peace when it comes to local-level confrontations between groups of two or three people," says TIME U.N. correspondent William Dowell. And with only half of the envisaged peacekeeping complement of 50,000 actually deployed so far, lawlessness and ethnic violence continue to plague the area. So far Annan has collected pledges for 1,900 cops - including 450 from the U.S. - but he wants a total force of at least 3,000.