Danish Official Lands Top Post in Kosovo

Danish Defense Minister Hans Haekkerup will succeed Bernard Kouchner of France in mid-January as the U.N. administrator in Kosovo, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced. Kouchner has served as U.N. administrator since the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization took control of Kosovo in June 1999 after the Western alliance’s 78-day air war against Yugoslavia. That campaign was launched to stop a crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main republic. Haekkerup, 55, has been defense minister since 1993.