Kouchner very worried about Kosovo security_______________________________________________________________________ROME, Oct 7 (AFP) - The UN administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner said Thursday he was "very worried" about the security situation in Kosovo as more evidence of planned ethnic-hate attacks added to the tide of violence in the province this week.
Speaking in Rome, Kouchner revealed that two bombs had been discovered -- one Wednesday in UH World Food Programme buildings and one Tuesday in a separate UN building.
The discoveries follow the violent clash Tuesday between ethnic Albanians mourners and Serb passers-by at a funeral in Mitrovica.
One Serb died and 10 were injured in the incident. In addition 18 KFOR troops and three members of UNMIK's internationally-staffed police force were injured.
"These incidents show how deep the hatred and the opposition between the two communities is," Kouchner said, adding that rivalries "would not just disappear miraculously in a few months."
Kouchner made his comments at a promotional meeting for a study of Kosovo written by Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema.
"Safety for the minorities is not sufficiently guaranteed," Kouchner said, speaking from the platform he shared with D'Alema and NATO's Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark.
"We came to protect one minority, the Albanian minority, and we found out that one minority can hide another, and one oppression can hide another," he said, referring to the Bosnian, Serb and Romany communities in Kosovo.
Kouchner said his role in Kosovo was not humanitarian, but political.
He said political forces in the province -- who had a "rough" concept of politics -- were engaged "in a continual fight for the upper hand."
Kouchner said his role was not to work for Kosovo's independence, but for "substantial autonomy" in the province, as laid down by UN resolutions.
Kouchner said he was satisfied with the transformation of the Kosovo Liberation Army into a civilian emergency force whose members would begin next week rebuilding Albanian and Serb houses.
D'Alema said that the international community had to accept that reconstruction in the Balkans could only be undertaken when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was no longer in power.
He also argued for the creation of a purely European defence force, saying that Europe had been "traumatised and humiliated " during the Kosovo crisis by US military superiority.Copyright © 1999 AFP
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OSCE rejects hasty Kosovo electionsPRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Oct 7 (AFP) - How soon Kosovars cast ballots in their first post-war elections is less important that getting preparations well underway, OSCE chairman in office Knut Vollebaek said Thursday.
Winding up his fifth visit to the province, the Norwegian foreign minister said the idea of holding elections in May 2000 -- only 11 months after Kosovo became a UN protectorate within Yugoslavia -- was not set in stone.
"Whether you have May, June, July or August is of minor importance, as long as there is a process, a dynamic process" that convinces Kosovars that the elections will be crucial and credible, Vollebaek told reporters.
"What is important is that we start preparing... We have to make sure that these are looked upon as legitimate elections," he said.
Under the auspices of the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is charged with setting up an electoral system in Kosovo, drawing on its experience in other post-communist eastern European states.
But analysts say it is at odds with chief UN administrator Bernard Kouchner, who is understood to want local elections as soon as possible as a prelude to a general election next May.
Such snap polls would clear up the political air for Kouchner, who now finds himself struggling with in-fighting among ethnic Albanian politicians and with a boycott by Serbs of his inter-ethnic Kosovo Transitional Council.
The OSCE argues that that too much legwork remains to be done to prepare the election -- from voter registration and electoral laws to figuring out how isolated villagers will cast their ballots.
Whether Kosovo is safe enough is also in doubt. Violence persists, especially between ethnic Albanians and a shrinking Serb minority, despite the extensive deployment of the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR).
The OSCE, based in Vienna, has the most experience in Kosovo of any major international organization, having run the short-lived Kosovo Verification Mission prior to NATO's 11-week air war against Yugoslavia.
Kosovo's last elections, when the province was under Serbian rule, were held underground in early 1998 when Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) leader Ibrahim Rugova was re-elected "president" of a parallel ethnic Albanian government.
Rugova ran uncontested, after his rivals boycotted the polls, and is today seen as enjoying a rebound in popularity after being overshadowed last year by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).
Hashim Thaci, political leader of the KLA before it disbanded last month under NATO pressure, and a major player at the failed Rambouillet peace talks in February, is expected to launch his own party.
Both men believe in an independent Kosovo, an idea that Western powers refuse to endorse. They fear a new Balkan state would only create more crisis in a region still reeling from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
While in Pristina, on his fifth visit to Kosovo as OSCE chairman, Vollebaek met Kouchner, outgoing KFOR commander Lieutenant General Mike Jackson, and ethnic Albanian political leaders, his entourage said.
He also met Serb community representatives and, on OSCE turf, Staimir Vukicevic, Belgrade's representative in Pristina.Copyright © 1999 AFP
OSCE Chief: End Threats Vs. SerbsBy Memli Krasniqi
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, Oct. 7, 1999; 10:51 a.m. EDTPRISTINA, Yugoslavia –– A leading international official today urged ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo to put an end to threats against the province's dwindling Serb population.
Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut Vollebaek, head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, urged ethnic Albanian leaders "to take clear steps against intimidation of the Serb population. Without reconciliation, there is little hope of establishing a new and democratic Kosovo."
Vollebaek's words come after weeks of ethnically motivated attacks on Serbs.
He also said preparing future elections are the biggest challenge for the OSCE, which is responsible for helping build a democratic civil society in Kosovo.
"The elections that are going to be held in Kosovo will have to have legitimacy, so that the leadership in Kosovo can be looked upon as a real leadership," said Vollebaek, adding that he hoped elections will be held in 2000, but did not give a date.
The OSCE opened a center aimed at providing support and communications to Kosovo's political parties, he said. So far, 14 parties have been invited to set up in the center, he said.
Ethnic Albanians have been attacking local Serbs recently in revenge for the 18-month Serb crackdown that ended with the NATO peacekeepers' June arrival in Kosovo, a province of Serbia.
NATO peacekeepers reported today that a Gypsy was stabbed in the southern city of Prizren. Also, the body of a 50-year-old ethnic Albanian man was found near Suva Reka on Wednesday, apparently killed by a gunshot.
Three grenade attacks also were reported. One in Dokovica killed one woman and seriously injured another in their apartment. Another attack injured two Serbs in the eastern city of Vitina. The third grenade was thrown into the yard of a Serb house but did not explode, peacekeepers said.
Also today, hundreds of miners marched from the northern industrial town of Kosovska Mitrovica to the nearby mine at Stari Trg, demanding that they be given their jobs back.
The mine was taken over by Serbs in 1990 and has been under French control since the peacekeepers arrived.
"We want to live from our work and from our sweat and by our own wages, we don't want to live from humanitarian aid," Xhafer Nuli, president of the independent syndicate of miners, told the crowd at the mouth of the mine.
"I gave more than 20 years of my life in this mine and for it, so we are ready even to die for our mine. We have to feed our families," said Behram Merrnica, 52, a miner.
In Kosovska Mitrovica itself, ethnic Albanian students protested in front of the U.N. building, demanding that they be allowed to return to their schools on the Serb side. Albanian hospital workers who lost their jobs at the hospital on the Serb side also demonstrated today.© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
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