Kosova Crisis Center
link to alb-net
By Andrew Gray
PRISHTINA (Reuters) - Serb leaders Saturday proposed dividing Kosova along ethnic lines to protect their people from attacks by Albanians.
Bernard Kouchner, the head of United Nations administration running Kosova, said he would study the idea but did not favor it, while Albanians flatly rejected the suggestion.
The Serbs made the proposal at a meeting the U.N. hoped would bring together all the major political figures in postwar Kosova. That hope was dashed, however, when ethnic Albanian guerrilla leader Hashim Thaqi decided not to attend.
Momcilo Trajkovic, the head of the Serbian Resistance Movement, said his proposal should be seen as a temporary measure to allow different ethnic groups to remain in Kosova.
``We think that cantonisation could stop the ongoing tragedy of the Serb people,'' he told reporters after the meeting.
``The multi-ethnic Kosova has failed,'' he added. ``We think that the position of the Serbs and multi-ethnicity in Kosova can only be preserved through cantonisation.''
Albanians, feeling liberated by the arrival of NATO-led peacekeepers in mid-June after years of Serb repression, have carried out scores of attacks on Serbs over the past two months.
In the latest example of the violence which has plagued the Serbian province, gunmen carried out a drive-by shooting and grenade attack on a Serb cafe and also threw a grenade into a busy children's playground, peacekeepers said.
The attacks took place in the town of Crkvena Vodica, a few miles west of the provincial capital Prishtina. Four people were wounded in the attack on the cafe and three were released after treatment. No one was hurt in the playground.
Kouchner acknowledged security remained a major concern, despite the presence of more than 40,000 peacekeepers. But he said only political solutions could make Kosova safe.
``There is a fantastic density of hatred here,'' the former French cabinet minister said. ``But the answer is not police, the answer is not soldiers. The answer is development, peace, democracy. The answer is jobs for the young people.''
Kouchner also played down the absence of Thaqi, the political leader of the Kosova Liberation Army and prime minister of a self-proclaimed provisional government.
He said Thaqi, who told him in a late-night telephone call from abroad that he would not return for the meeting of the Kosova Transitional Council, needed a break after months of hard work and would attend the next session Wednesday.
Keen to involve all the people of Kosova in running their homeland as early as possible, Kouchner also said he had proposed dividing his administration into directorates which would be run jointly by U.N. officials and local people.
The U.N.'s refugee agency estimates 180,000 Serbs left Kosova during and after the NATO bombing which forced Yugoslav police, troops and paramilitaries out of the province.
But Bilal Sherif, the KLA official at the council meeting, said about 100,000 Serbs had left along with the Yugoslav forces and had not been driven out by ethnic Albanian attacks.
``There can be absolutely no division of Kosova,'' he said in response to the cantonisation proposal.