- guardian.co.uk, Saturday 9 December 2000 02.46 GMT
Mr Haekkerup, 55, who has held the defence portfolio in Denmark since 1993, will take up the job in January.
"The secretary-general [Kofi Annan] has informed the security council of his intention to name Hans Haekkerup as his new special representative in Kosovo," UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said.
The UN mission in Kosovo is in charge of the civilian operation to rebuild the war-shattered Yugoslav province. It runs parallel to the Nato-led military operation.
Dr Kouchner told Mr Annan earlier this year he wanted to leave his job following local elections in Kosovo, held in October, after 18 gruelling months struggling to bridge the wide divide between the ethnic Albanians and Serbs.
Mr Eckhard said Mr Annan had spoken to Dr Kouchner, a former French health minister and co-founder of the Médecins Sans Frontières aid organisation, about a possible future assignment.
Mr Annan wanted to pay tribute to Dr Kouchner "for the inspirational leadership and dynamism with which he led this extremely difficult and challenging mission and for the remarkable success he has achieved there in its first year and a half", Mr Eckhard said.
Mr Haekkerup has had a lengthy political career, beginning with the Social Democratic Youth Organisation in 1960, and was a member of the executive committee of the Social Democratic party in the 1970s. He was elected as MP in 1979 and has served on various foreign affairs committees.
Mr Eckhard said Mr Annan was "pleased to have recruited a man of Hans Haekkerup's stature and ability to take over from Dr Kouchner ".
• Serbian police and ethnic Albanian rebels exchanged fire yesterday in a buffer zone along the boundary with Kosovo.
The shootout occurred near the village of Bukovac, inside the three-mile zone between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia, said Yugoslavia's police chief, Zoran Zivkovic. There were no casualties.
Yugoslavia has said that its security forces will take action if Nato-led troops in Kosovo do not expel ethnic Albanian rebels from the zone.
