Kosova Force Cracks Down On GuerrillasBy CARLOTTA GALL
PRISHTINA, Kosova -- The NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosova is clamping down hard on the Kosova Liberation Army, seizing arms caches almost daily and confiscating documents and even cash from premises, in what some officials say is a determined effort to dismantle the movement.
NATO and United Nations officials maintain that the tougher action is routine, and part of an agreement signed almost seven weeks ago that aimed to disarm the rebels within three months.
Until now, though, the peacekeeping force here has given the guerrillas a fairly wide berth. With the recent crackdown, the force is demonstrating that the peacekeepers will no longer tolerate violations of the agreement and that they expect the rebels to turn over their weapons and come to heel behind NATO and United Nations authorities.
The action has also underscored differences over the future role of the guerrillas and made clear that the peacekeepers have had to resort to more forceful measures to get the rebels to live up to an accord signed after high-level American officials intervened in the negotiations.
Members of the Kosovar army and the provisional government of Hashim Thaçi, who is the political leader of the movement, are growing increasingly unhappy as many of their aspirations are brushed aside. Those include forming a kind of National Guard and being made part of any police force for Kosova, as well as gaining social respect that they feel they have earned.
The guerrillas' leadership says that it will continue to cooperate with the NATO-led peacekeeping force and the United Nations mission here but warns that it may not be able to control disconsolate members of its rank and file, something of increasing concern to NATO commanders.
The next six weeks will be a crucial test for cooperation between the peacekeepers and the guerrillas. If things go wrong, the peacekeepers may find themselves with an insurgent army turning against them, some foreign military observers here warn.
"These problems could become bigger, more serious," said Bajram Kosumi, leader of the Parliamentary Party and minister of information in the provisional government. "Then we would have wide-scale chaos. I cannot even imagine what it would be like."
The peacekeepers insist that they are merely acting according to the agreement signed by their commander, Lieut. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, in June. At that time, the chief of staff of the Kosovar army, Gen. Agim Çeku, agreed that the rebels would hand in all heavy weapons, and 30 percent of their small arms by July 21.
But the guerrilla army apparently failed to hand over the bulk of its weapons. General Jackson gave them two extra days to do so, still without satisfaction. He has now begun conducting tough search-and-seizure operations across the province to force the rebels to comply.
On a typical day this week, the peacekeepers seized weapons in four or five different locations. On Thursday, they confiscated antitank grenade launchers, assault rifles, grenades, mines and mortar rounds in several premises and intercepted a truck carrying ammunition and several rifles into Kosova from Albania.
Peacekeeping troops also arrested Rexhep Selimi, the minister of public order in the provisional government, and seized money, weapons and ministry identification cards at his home this week. Selimi was forced to issue a statement a day later acknowledging the peacekeepers' and the United Nations' authority and admitting that his ministry's identification cards were inappropriate.
While the peacekeeping force clearly established its authority, the incident was perceived as a humiliation for Selimi and may bode ill for future cooperation.
The peacekeeping force has been acting energetically to curb the general criminal activity in Kosova and is quick to point out that many of the arms seized do not necessarily belong to the Kosova Liberation Army or Serbian paramilitaries, originally seen as the two main parties to be disarmed, but to criminal gangs or rogue elements who do not want to demobilize.
"Now more and more there is some kind of evidence to suggest there is a third actor," said a peacekeeping spokesman, Maj.
Roland Lavoie. "The amount of money and material confiscated suggests a more criminal activity."
Yet whoever the criminals are, it is the guerrilla movement that is taking the heat for the perceived non-compliance with NATO demands. Peacekeeping soldiers on the ground appear to have little sympathy for the guerrilla fighters. The atrocities committed by the Serbian forces are no longer foremost in their minds. What preoccupies them now are the intimidation and revenge killings committed daily by Albanians.
"When you are a soldier on the ground there is a natural evolution to find an opponent," a British military observer explained, working with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. "The soldiers are coming up against nastiness and see the Albanians as the bad ones."
That attitude is not lost on the guerrilla force and their sympathizers.
"They are treating our war heroes like dogs," said Kosumi, who never joined the guerrilla army but sought its protection in the mountains during the war.
He said that it is as if the United Nations mission in Kosova, known as Unmik, and NATO "want to allow the image of the K.L.A. to be ruined."
"Now we are in a dilemma," he said. "Should we allow our image to be ruined or should we say to Unmik to stop? Should we take action?"
He argues that NATO and the United Nations authorities are becoming dismissive of the guerrilla movement, which he says is wrong and dangerous.
Officials in the two organizations are trying to bypass the two most controversial paragraphs in the disarmament accord, which agree to give consideration to former guerrillas who want to take part in the police force and forming their own national guard.
Those paragraphs were agreed to by James P. Rubin, assistant to Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, to help clinch the demilitarisation agreement with Thaçi, the guerrillas' leader, in June. Yet many in the United Nations and at NATO do not agree with those paragraphs and have no intention of letting them be realized, observers said.
"They have considered it and they are not going to do it," said a Western diplomat in Prishtina, speaking of the United Nations and NATO authorities. The guerrillas "are not being encouraged to think it is going to happen," the diplomat continued.
The provisional government knows it is being brushed off every time it tries to talk about the National Guard, and is not happy, Kosumi said, not least because many of the rank and file are expecting some sort of future employment.August 15, 1999
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