VZCZCXRO5524
OO RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHROV RUEHSR
DE RUEHPS #0219/01 0691926
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
O 101926Z MAR 06
FM USOFFICE PRISTINA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC IMMEDIATE 5898
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUFOANA/USNIC PRISTINA SR
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0609
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASHDC
RHEHNSC/NSC WASHDC
RUCPDOC/DEPT OF COMMERCE WASHDC

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PRISTINA 000219 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EUR/SCE, EUR/ACE 
NSC FOR BRAUN 
USDOC FOR AC, 3004:PAT NUGENT 
PASS USAID FOR EE/ECA, EE/DGSR 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/10/2016 
TAGS: ECPS ETRD PGOV PREL YI UNMIK
SUBJECT: LAST CHANCE FOR UN TO FIX KOSOVO TELECOM MARKET 
 
REF: 05 PRISTINA 1159 
 
Classified By: COM PHILIP GOLDBERG; REASON 1.5 B/D. 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY.  UNMIK has long ruled out any reconsideration 
of its October 2004 annulment, on grounds of serious 
procedural irregularity, of the award of Kosovo's second 
mobile phone operating license to the Mobikos consortium. 
The outgoing government of Bajram Kosumi has defiantly 
insisted on resurrecting the award.  One of Kosumi's last 
acts in office was to order the regulator to facilitate 
Mobikos' market entry -- UNMIK quickly rejected the order. 
Concluding that the Kosumi order legally trumps UNMIK's 
rejection of it, Mobikos has vowed to construct an operating 
network under the direction of its American (Harris 
Corporation) and Slovenian (Mobitel) consortium members. 
SRSG Soren Jessen-Petersen has discussed the second license 
with incoming Prime Minister Agim Ceku and believes Ceku will 
support the only way forward UNMIK will allow -- conduct of a 
new tender from scratch.  Many stakeholders believe that a 
transparent and fair tender process can be achieved only by 
hiring a world-class consultant to run it, but fear that 
UNMIK will instead put off the matter until Kosovo's final 
status is determined.  No matter what happens on the tender, 
the USG can help bring economic sanity to the Kosovo telecom 
market by continuing to advocate for the United Nations to 
compel the International Telecommunications Union to grant 
UNMIK its own international dialing code and thereby greatly 
reduce call rates.  END SUMMARY. 
 
 
Background 
---------- 
 
¶2. (SBU) In June 2004 Kosovo's independent Telecommunications 
Regulatory Authority (TRA) declared the Mobikos consortium 
the winner of an operating license tender designed to 
introduce competition into a market in which incumbent 
monopoly Vala 900 has been providing poor service at inflated 
prices since the end of the Kosovo conflict in 1999. 
Reacting to compelling reports of irregularities in the 
selection process, then Principal Deputy of the Special 
Representative of the Secretary General (PDSRSG) Charles 
Brayshaw formally suspended the award pending review of the 
tender by the Irish consultancy HELM, retained for the 
purpose.  HELM issued a report in October 2004 that was 
highly critical of the tender process, especially its 
pre-qualification phase, and Brayshaw consequently formally 
annulled the tender and referred the entire matter to UNMIK 
Pillar I (law and order) for investigation of possible 
official corruption.  Then Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi 
confirmed to econoffs on March 7 (2006) that he had fully 
supported both the suspension (in light of rampant reports of 
PISG impropriety) and the annulment (in light of the HELM 
report) but quickly became distressed when UNMIK inexplicably 
refused to offer guidance on next steps and TRA Chair Anton 
Berisha inexplicably insisted on issuing a license to Mobikos 
notwithstanding UNMIK's annulment of the tender. 
 
¶3. (SBU) (NOTE. The American company Western Wireless was a 
partner in the KMPC bidding consortium until its recent 
dissolution of that arrangement.  Motorola's after-license 
equipment supply contract with Mobikos expired last year. 
Mobikos then brought in the Harris Corporation of Florida as 
a consortium partner.  Representatives of the 
Canadian/American company Nortel recently visited USOP to 
also express interest in the tender. END NOTE.) 
 
¶4. (SBU) After voiding the license UNMIK officials repeatedly 
rejected urgent suggestions from the PISG and the 
international community that a delay in relaunching the 
tender would diminish Kosovo in the eyes of potential 
investors from all sectors because they were viewing the 
telecom license award -- expected to involve 100 million 
euros in start-up costs -- as a primary indicator of the 
maturity of the Kosovo market.  TRA's Berisha frequently 
expressed frustration to econoffs during the ensuing 14 
months that the telecommunications ministry had not 
instructed him to launch a new tender yet UNMIK would not let 
him implement the result of the old one. 
 
UNMIK Neglect Invites Chaos 
 
PRISTINA 00000219  002 OF 003 
 
 
--------------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) In November 2005 Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi 
ordered TRA to hire a consultant at PISG expense to 
re-evaluate the fairness of the original tender.  Berisha 
complied and the British consultancy KPMG, over muted UNMIK 
objection, was retained and produced a February 2006 report 
that criticized the tender process but pronounced it overall 
to be reasonably consistent with international standards. 
Facing imminent removal from office on unrelated grounds, one 
of Kosumi's last executive acts, on March 1, was to issue a 
formal order to TRA to implement the conclusions of the KPMG 
report, i.e. to license Mobikos, within 30 days. 
 
¶6. (SBU) The SRSG did not formally countermand Kosumi's 
order, but an UNMIK spokesperson explained to the press 
UNMIK's view that the order had no effect and that UNMIK's 
annulment of the tender remained in effect.  In a March 3 
meeting with E/P chief, UNMIK Legal Advisor Alexander 
Borg-Olivier and Deputy Legal Advisor Ernst Tsepsche 
acknowledged that the SRSG had acted unwisely in neglecting 
the tender for more than a year and had thereby caused deep 
resentment among PISG officials, especially in that Pillar I 
had publicly opened an investigation with attendant damage to 
the reputations of Berisha and other officials and then 
evidently took no further action. 
 
¶7. (C) Post's continual soundings of virtually everyone 
involved in the tender reveal a hardening of PISG position as 
the Rexhepi administration gave way to the Kosumi 
administration.  Very high officials of the LDK-AAK governing 
coalition (Democratic League of Kosovo-Alliance for the 
Future of Kosovo) have acknowledged to us in recent months, 
with frequently disarming forthrightness, that a political 
dimension has come to dominate their approach to the tender. 
Ekrim Lluka, CEO of Mobikos local member Dukagjini Company, 
has long been a primary AAK benefactor, most recently by 
making major financial contributions to the defense fund of 
former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj in connection 
with the prosecution pending against him before the 
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. 
Senior coalition officials confidentially tell us that they 
are expected to deliver the license to Mobikos and that they 
cannot agree to a new tender so long as Mobikos continues to 
assert a right to a license.  Berisha, a member of the LDK 
general council, acknowledges that he is under enormous 
political pressure and claims he would resign rather than 
implement a new tender. 
 
¶8. (SBU) On March 7 Mobikos General Manager Fatmir Gashi, 
noting that UNMIK has never revoked its transfer to the PISG 
of competency over the tender as contained in the 2003 
Telecommunications Law, insisted to econoffs that Kosumi's 
order takes priority over the UNMIK press statement in the 
absence of such a formal revocation of PISG authority. 
(NOTE. Jurisdiction over the Kosovo telecom market is an 
UNMIK-PISG hodgepodge with UNMIK administering the Vala 900 
monopoly but TRA responsible for market entry. END NOTE.)  On 
March 8, Gashi made a similar argument to the Kosovo media 
and announced that Mobikos would shortly begin construction 
of a mobile phone network under the supervision of 
specialists from consortium members Harris Corporation of the 
United States and Mobitel of Slovenia. 
 
¶9. (SBU) In a March 9 meeting with liaison offices, attended 
by DPO, SRSG Jessen-Petersen said he has discussed the mobile 
tender with incoming Prime Minister Agim Ceku and that Ceku 
is receptive to the only way forward UNMIK will allow -- 
conduct of a new tender from scratch. 
 
New York No Help Either 
----------------------- 
 
¶10. (SBU) Monopoly capitalism is not the only reason Kosovars 
have the worst telephone service and the highest call rates 
in Europe.  Vala 900 also passes on to consumers the fees and 
opportunity costs (50-100 million euro per year according to 
UNMIK) associated with the rental of an international dialing 
code from Monaco Telecom (owned by British giant Cable and 
Wireless).  In an effort to escape these costs, 
Jessen-Petersen filed an application in the summer of 2004 
with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for a 
 
PRISTINA 00000219  003 OF 003 
 
 
dialing code to be dedicated to UNMIK for use by all Kosovo 
operators.  Several months of often-contentious discussions 
between ITU (a UN specialized agency) and UNMIK (with strong 
USG and UN support) seemingly removed all legal obstacles yet 
failed to convince ITU leadership to give UNMIK the code. 
After a sharply worded letter from UN Undersecretary 
Jean-Marie Guehenno to the ITU demanding that UNMIK be given 
a code, New York seems to have lost interest in the matter. 
 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
¶11. (C) Post has studied both the HELM report and the KPMG 
report.  Neither is overwhelmingly persuasive on the question 
of whether the 2004 tender would be salvageable. 
Fortunately, however, we are not compelled to resolve this 
battle of experts.  UNSCR 1244 and Kosovo's Constitutional 
Framework leave no room for doubt in our view that UNMIK has 
bottom line jurisdiction over all issues in Kosovo.  UNMIK's 
original decision to annul the tender certainly represented a 
reasonable course given the available evidence of impropriety 
(flaunting of pre-qualification rules, review commission 
members who could not read English (the required language for 
all bids), over-reaching by government officials, etc.) and 
was not subject to appeal. 
 
¶12. (C) Having voided the tender, UNMIK obviously took on a 
responsibility to fix the process it so obviously had 
concluded was broken.  However, UNMIK has declined to exert 
authority out of misguided fear that doing so would amount to 
a retreat from its mandate to transfer governing competencies 
to the PISG.  By leaving the tender in limbo for well over a 
year, the SRSG has created a pervasive impression in the 
investor community that UNMIK can't execute the tender 
either.  Many investors (Western Wireless evidently among 
them) have reached the reasonable conclusion that Kosovo, 
regardless of who's in charge, just isn't ready to do 
business. 
 
¶13. (C) The coming of the Ceku government, sworn in on March 
10, presents an opportunity for UNMIK and the PISG to 
conclude the tender at long last.  As a life-long 
military/civil defense official, Ceku has little business 
background and comes to this issue without preconception. 
Early indications are that he is fully open to the obvious 
solution (reftel) of instructing his government to work with 
UNMIK to retain a reputable international consultant with 
expansive terms of reference allowing it to de facto run the 
entire tender process.  United Nations headquarters in New 
York could yet play a positive role, both by encouraging 
UNMIK to insist, by taking over the process completely if 
need be, that a tender be concluded and by ordering the ITU 
to give UNMIK a dialing code. 
 
¶14. (C) The opportunity presented by Ceku's arrival may be 
the last before Kosovo's final status is determined.  Should 
UNMIK fail to resolve matters before itself departing the 
scene, Kosovo would be left to its own devices which, judging 
by the first tender, would inspire little of the foreign 
direct investment Kosovo will need to develop a 
self-sustaining economy. 
 
END COMMENT 
GOLDBERG