U.N. Chief Goes to Kosovo

By George Jahn, Associated Press, Oct. 13, 1999

 
U.N. Chief Goes to Kosovo

By George Jahn
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, Oct. 13, 1999; 10:14 a.m. EDT

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia –– U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan made his first trip to Kosovo today just two days after a grim reminder of persistent ethnic hatred in the region – the killing of a U.N. worker who angered ethnic Albanians by speaking to them in the Serb language.
     After arriving from the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, Annan met with ethnic Albanian and Serb leaders, including Serbs who resigned three weeks ago from a multiethnic advisory council to protest the U.N. decision to transform the ethnic Albanian army into the Kosovo Protection Corps.
     Although Annan refrained from comment after the meeting, others were guardedly optimistic about Kosovo's short-term future.
     Kosovo's most prominent moderate ethnic Albanian politician, Ibrahim Rugova, said the security situation in the province was improving despite the killing of the U.N. worker, whose murder he condemned.
     Hashim Thaci, political chief of the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, also said security was improving.
     Thaci also said an executive group with representatives of all political parties would soon be formed. He did not elaborate, but the daily Kosova Sot newspaper said Thaci and chief U.N. administrator Bernard Kouchner would share decision-making powers in the group.
     Kouchner would have a veto over decisions, the newspaper said.
     Serb community leader Momcilo Trajkovic, who also attended the meeting, said his presence did not mean Serbs would return to the advisory council.
     "We don't want to be part of a council which tries to solve only Albanian problems," he said. Trajokovic and other Serb representatives claim the Kosovo Protection Corps is nothing more than the old KLA under a new name.
     The commander of the corps, Agin Ceku, was also military chief of the KLA.
     Annan also met with Kouchner and German Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, the commander of NATO-led peacekeepers.
     The secretary-general's two-day visit is taking place against the backdrop of Monday's brutal slaying of U.N. staffer Valentin S. Krumov, a Bulgarian national beaten and shot on the main street of this provincial capital after arriving for duty earlier in the day.
     Krumov had been asked for the time by a group of teen-agers and he responded in Serbian, according to Inspector Gilles Moreau, an international police officer.
     The incident reflects the intense hatred ethnic Albanians feel toward Serbs four months after the 18-month crackdown by Serb forces that left 10,000 people dead.
     Neither the NATO-led peacekeeping force that arrived in June nor international police who arrived in August have been able to quell sporadic ethnic violence – much of it directed against the dwindling minority of Serbs in Kosovo by ethnic Albanians seeking revenge.
     Krumov was believed to be the first U.N. staffer killed since the peacekeepers arrived.
     Before leaving Sarajevo, Annan appealed for an end to revenge attacks.
     "We have appealed for revenge to cease, we have appealed for tolerance and reconciliation which obviously will take some time," he said.
     During his Sarajevo visit, Annan also apologized for the failure of the United Nations to avert war and bloodshed in Bosnia.
     It was the first such admission by a U.N. official to the part of the Bosnian population that regards itself as the victim of the world's inability to stop the 3½-year war. Tens of thousands were killed and half of all Bosnians became refugees.
     At the time, Annan was the head of U.N. peacekeeping operations.
     "No one laments more than we the failure of the international community to take decisive action to halt the suffering and end a war that had produced so many victims," Annan said.

© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press

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