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PRISTINA, Nov 1 (Reuters) - Efforts to rebuild Kosovo's courts from the rubble of war have largely failed and international jurists should be recruited to help out, the European security watchdog agency said on Monday.
Daan Everts, head of mission in Pristina for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said not a single court case had yet been brought to trial in Kosovo since the United Nations and NATO took over running the province from Serb authorities in June.
``The judicial situation is a very massive problem,'' he said.
He attributed this to a variety of factors, including an insufficient number of judges, low pay, inadequate court facilities and even uncertainty about laws that should apply.
With hundreds of cases awaiting trial, Everts told reporters at a briefing that the OSCE was proposing the recruitment of about 10 to 20 international jurists to help oversee the Kosovo courts and get them going.
``I see a need for international judges to come in to reinforce the whole system,'' Everts said.
He said it had become clear, despite the appointment of more than 50 judges, that the courts needed outside expertise to help get them up and running.
He said the role of the international judges would be ``not to take over but to reinforce.''
He said he had discussed the idea recently with Bernard Kouchner, the top United Nations official in charge of Kosovo, and that Kouchner was supportive.
``Kouchner agrees and this has begun gelling already in one week,'' Everts said.
Everts, whose agency is involved in helping to rebuild the institutional structures in Kosovo, said that one of the problems that was being encountered was reluctance of ethnic Albanian judges to apply any laws that refer to Serbia.
He said the United Nations had already decreed that Yugoslav law would apply in Kosovo, except when it countermands internationally recognised statutes, but that the codes still needed to be reformed to meet local concerns.
``They don't want the word Serb used,'' he said.
Everts also said the OSCE would release in December a detailed reports on massacres and other human rights abuses committed in Kosovo during the period from late 1998 through early 1999 when an OSCE-led Kosovo Verification Mission was in charge of monitoring Serb compliance with a peace deal which failed to prevent continued killings of ethnic Albanians.
He said the report on violations mainly by Serbs was ``very powerful'' but said the OSCE was keeping a tight lid on the document until its release on international human rights day on December 10.