NATO and U.N. Agree on Role for K.L.A. as Civilian ForceBy CARLOTTA GALL
PRISHTINË, Kosova -- After weeks of negotiations, NATO and United Nations officials have agreed to allow a part of the Kosova Liberation Army, the guerrilla force of Kosova Albanians, to survive as a lightly armed civilian emergency force.
Under the Kosova peace agreement, the rebel army is being dismantled this month under United Nations supervision. Its successor, tentatively called the Kosova Corps, is to be a civilian force, set up for coping with emergencies like forest fires, earthquakes, mountain rescue and reconstruction.
Still, officials said its 3,000 members will have a military structure formed from the core commanders and brigades of the present Kosova Liberation Army. Estimates of the army's strength during the Kosova fighting range from 10,000 to 30,000.
The new force will have uniforms and a limited supply of sidearms to protect equipment, and will receive training and equipment, including helicopters, from abroad.
As details are worked out, sorting out the duties of the new force remains extremely delicate, not least because of the implications for Kosova Albanians' aspiration for independence and for Yugoslavia's sovereignty over this province.
Under the June 21 agreement under which the demilitarisation program was begun, the international custodians of the province agreed to consider the formation of a force on the lines of the National Guard in the United States.
Though NATO sees the Kosova Corps as a civilian force, the rebel officers see it as a potential core of a national army, and are selling it to their followers as such.
"We will build a new army in the future, and the Kosova Corps will be one part of it," said Gen. Agim Çeku, the chief of staff and a professional soldier for 20 years, who is negotiating the plan.
The Sept. 19 deadline for complete demilitarisation of the 9,000 troops of the Kosova Liberation Army has been extended 10 days, to allow more time for the transformation, according to a spokesman at the Kosova army headquarters. But both rebel officers and officers from the NATO-led peacekeeping force have expressed confidence that the army will disarm.
Leaders of the rebels have never hidden their ambition to turn the irregular force into a professional defensive army. Even as they signed a basic undertaking in June to transform the army into a civilian force, General Çeku and the army's political leader, Hashim Thaçi, said Kosova would need its own armed force after NATO troops leave.
But after weeks of talks, they have settled for far less.
In interviews with leading officials in Kosova this week, officials with the United Nations, the peacekeepers and Kosova Albanians stressed the civilian aspect of the new force.
"It is not the creation of an army," said Dr. Bernard Kouchner, the United Nations special representative, who leads the civil administration in Kosova. "You have to place this project within the ongoing process of demilitarisation. It will be a civilian system of protection based on the model of the French Sécurité Civile."
The peacekeeping force, which will oversee formation of the new service, is rigid in its view of the plan.
"You cannot demilitarise and at the same time turn yourself into an army," said Lieut. Col. Robin Clifford, spokesman for the peacekeeping command. Far from an embryo army, the new organization is "intended for those who want to be in uniformed public service," he said.
Despite such clear statements by NATO and United Nations officials, the political leaders of the army describe it as the future defence force that they see as essential to Kosova's struggle for independence from Yugoslavia. "It is a symbolic organization because NATO is here now and taking care of security," said Fatmir Lima, a former guerrilla army commander and deputy defence minister in the provisional government. "But it will be a structured organization that will prepare the young generation."
His comments were reflected elsewhere.
"Kosova will have its defence force," said Thaçi, the prime minister of the provisional government, who signed the original undertaking to demilitarise. "I cannot imagine Kosova without defence."
Thaçi, who left Kosova on Wednesday on an extended tour of European capitals en route to Washington, made it clear that independence remained his ultimate goal. "I have never claimed that I am for anything else," he said.
Western nations "are understanding more and more that it should be for the people of Kosova to decide and for us to hold a referendum," he said. "Kosova cannot be run from Belgrade but only from within Kosova."
International representatives in Kosova may privately agree with Thaçi, but the formation of the Kosova Corps is not so much a recognition of Kosova’s future needs as a practical solution to squash the rebel organization and control potential troublemakers, they say.
Since their arrival in Kosova in June, the peacekeepers have grappled with the high level of crime, much of which has been attributed to members of the guerrilla army.
That alone has made it clear that the army would make a better ally than an enemy. As a military observer with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said, referring to the peacekeeping force, known as KFOR: "The main thing to avoid is a clash between KFOR and the K.L.A. It is absolutely the last thing anyone wants because it would explode the whole operation here."
Aware of the difficulties of persuading guerrillas to give up their weapons and adjust to civilian life, the peacekeepers and the United Nations are offering them a range of options that would provide employment.
A large number of former fighters are being drawn into the province's police service, which is eventually planned to total 4,000 members.
Others have gone for civil administration jobs in their regions. Most have returned home to rebuild their houses and their businesses. They are being helped by the International Organization for Migration, which is providing training and even university stipends for ex-soldiers.
Dr. Kouchner is a defender of the need to respect the former fighters and help them adjust.
"I understand perfectly the people who fought in the ranks of the K.L.A., their demand for dignity," he said. "They must be allowed to reintegrate into civilian life and feed their families. They need to be among their companions, in a solid structure that is disciplined, well equipped, with an esprit de corps, capable of fulfilling legitimate and honourable missions of which they can be proud.
"The failure of such a project could only reinforce the mafia and encourage an underground army."
That may happen anyway. For all the guerrilla leaders' evident cooperation, there are signs they are distressed as they realize they are cooperating in breaking up their army.
"They are not at all happy," said a local journalist. "What kind of uniforms matter when it is an unarmed army? They are going to look like marionettes, a puppet army."
The army's political leadership also faces a difficult future because the peacekeepers and ultimately the United Nations mission will assume control of the new force.
Thaçi said he would shortly announce the formation of a political party, although his tardiness is being interpreted as a failure to draw all the leaders around him. Some close associates have already split and formed their own political party, local newspapers reported this week.
There are some commanders who may go it alone, refusing to join any structure and preferring to retain their life of the last decade as powerful local figures outside the system. There are also signs that the more secretive rebel units, like the special forces and intelligence, do not intend to disband and will go underground.
The rebel force, never a totally cohesive structure, may dissipate, but it may also throw out dangerous splinter groups, a Western military observer warned. With the Kosova Corps, the peacekeepers are trying to corral the main players, he said.September 3, 1999
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