PRISTINA, Kosovo-A human rights group criticized Kosovo's justice system Friday, saying its failure to fairly and adequately prosecute criminals is to blame for its ongoing ethnic and political violence.

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged Kosovo's government and European overseers to improve Kosovo's "extremely weak" justice system.

The report came about a month after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia and as a 1,800-strong European Union rule of law mission, known as EULEX, began its deployment there.

"Kosovo's criminal justice system is broken," Holly Cartner, Human Rights Watch's director for Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement. "It's in urgent need of fixing and that will take a real commitment by the government and the EU."

The 34-page report criticized the system's insufficient police support for prosecutors and deep divisions between national and U.N.-appointed judges and prosecutors. It said prosecutors were suspicious of national officials' ability to conduct fair investigations and deliver unbiased verdicts in sensitive cases such as ethnic crimes, political violence and corruption.

"The lack of integration in the system undermines its efficiency and hampers efforts to build capacity among national prosecutors and judges," the report said.

Reacting to it, Arsim Janova, Kosovo's deputy justice minister, agreed that urgent improvements are needed in the justice system and that authorities are eager to improve their "insufficient cooperation" with EULEX and U.N.-appointed judges and prosecutors.

"We are now focusing on how to better harmonize our work with EULEX, and it is promising since we will work on cases together," he said in an interview.

Kosovo, formerly a province of Serbia, was under U.N. rule for nine years following NATO's air campaign to halt Serbia's crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. In a move backed by the United States and most European Union countries, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia last month.

The U.N., which has maintained a veto power over Kosovo's affairs, is to transfer power to Kosovo's state authorities in June, while the EU mission will oversee Kosovo authorities' ability to respect the rights of minority Serbs and strengthen the rule of law. The EU mission will be made up of 1,800 police officers and judges and 200 civilian advisers.

Human Rights Watch criticized a lack of independent oversight of the work of judges, prosecutors and police, and concluded that the existing justice system "generally lacks transparency, making it hard for the public to determine whether justice is being done."

It also reported widespread witness intimidation and lack of witness protection programs, as well as unfairly lenient sentences because of the intimidation of national judges who "are threatened and bullied by defendants, their relatives, or their supporters."

Cartner said building a rule of law in Kosovo will rely on "the ability to learn from past mistakes, and on the willingness of the government and the new international mission to police, prosecute, and punish criminal conduct, wherever and by whomever it is committed."