Monday September 27 6:45 AM ETReconciliation Urged in Kosovo
By ROBERT H. REID Associated Press Writer
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - NATO's secretary-general today urged Kosovo's political leaders to work for ethnic reconciliation, warning that they will be held responsible for future acts of violence.
Secretary-General Javier Solana also endorsed a newly emerging force made up predominantly of former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, while emphasizing that - unlike its predecessor - it is meant to be apolitical and civilian in nature.
``Remember, it will not be a political force and it certainly will not be an army,'' he told reporters, referring to the Kosovo Protection Corps, established last week with the formal dissolution of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Serbs have reacted to the new organization's creation with outrage, asserting that it perpetuates the KLA under a new name, and thus takes Kosovo another step on the way to independence from Serbia, Yugoslavia's dominant republic.
KLA fighters battled Yugoslav and Serbian forces for 18 months until NATO bombing forced President Slobodan Milosevic to pull out his troops and accept a Kosovo settlement that effectively leaves Serbia with no say in its province.
Violent incidents, many of them ethnically motivated, have continued past the withdrawal of Milosevic's forces and the entry of NATO peacekeeping troops into the province. Among the violence reported today by NATO officials was a shooting Sunday inside former KLA offices north of Pristina that killed a guard of the Protection Corps and injured a civilian.
Elsewhere, an ethnic Albanian was shot and killed in the western city of Pec, and another man, whose ethnic origin was not stated, was shot to death in Djakovica to the south. North of Pristina, an ethnic Albanian man was hospitalized in Kosovo Mitrovica after being shot and wounded, while two elderly Serbs were stabbed just outside of Pristina.
Solana urged Kosovo's ethnic Albanian and Serb leaders to ``reaffirm a commitment to build a multiethnic Kosovo and society.''
Solana spoke to reporters after talks late Sunday with Kosovo's Serb representatives. They told him that the decision to allow former ethnic Albanian rebels to organize the lightly armed force undermined NATO efforts to win the confidence of the dwindling Serb community. The Serb leaders urged support of separate Serb regions in Kosovo.
Lt. Col. Robin Clifford, a NATO spokesman, said a planned meeting Sunday with Hashim Thaci, the leader of the former KLA, was canceled after Thaci did not show up. He offered no reason for Thaci's absence.
Serbs have formally asked the chief U.N. administrator, Bernard Kouchner, to establish five self-governing ``cantons'' in areas where Serbs form the majority. That could pave the way for the ethnic partition of Kosovo. Kouchner has not formally replied to the controversial proposal.
Serb officials last week resigned from a multiethnic advisory council meant to give ethnic Albanians and minority Serbs a say in running the province, now formally administered by the United Nations and policed by NATO.
The Serbs resigned to protest the decision to transform the KLA into the 5,000-member Kosovo Protection Corps.
Thousands of ethnic Albanians were killed by Serb forces during Milosevic's 18-month crackdown. But after NATO bombing forced the Serb troops to withdraw, ethnic Albanians began attacking Serbs in revenge, forcing many of the province's 200,000 Serbs to flee.Copyright © 1996-1999 The Associated Press
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