[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AB?=ALBEUROPA=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BB?=} Ex-KLA Official Dismisses Kostunica Kosovo Claim

[Nikoll A Mirakaj]

Ex-KLA Official Dismisses Kostunica Kosovo Claim 

PRISTINA, Oct 9, 2000 -- (Reuters) A former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) official said new president Vojislav Kostunica was beating the drum of Serb nationalism by calling for Yugoslavia to strengthen its sovereignty over the province.

In an interview with Reuters, Jakup Krasniqi said Kostunica risked the same fate as his ousted predecessor Slobodan Milosevic if he did not abandon nationalist politics.

"In Belgrade, they are again playing the nationalist card, but every attempt of the new elected president to return Kosovo to Serbia will be a final defeat of Serbian nationalism," he said.

Krasniqi, once spokesman of the officially disbanded KLA and now general secretary of the Democratic Party of Kosovo, was angered by Kostunica's sovereignty comments in his inaugural speech.

Kosovo, still technically part of Yugoslavia, has effectively been under United Nations control since NATO expelled Serb forces after a 78-day bombing campaign last year to end Belgrade's violence towards the majority Albanians.

"Serbs were forced to withdraw their forces from Kosovo and now Serbia is out of Kosovo," Krasniqi said. "Kosovo will walk to independence."

Serbia and Montenegro are the two remaining republics within the Yugoslav Federation.

The KLA guerrilla army fought a bitter year-long campaign against what they regarded as Serb occupation and its members, along with most ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, have never given up their goal of complete independence.

The West, fearful of altering borders lest it destabilize the region, insists the province should remain a part of Yugoslavia with a high level of autonomy.

Krasniqi said Serb nationalism as practiced by Milosevic over the past decade had led Yugoslavia to lose Serb-inhabited areas in Croatia, in Bosnia and in Kosovo.

"If Serbia tries (nationalism again)...it is possible that Belgrade will become just a Pashaluk," he said, referring to a small Ottoman district ruled by a local prince.

Like many ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, Krasniqi said he believed Kostunica, viewed by the West as a breath of democracy in Belgrade, was little different from Milosevic.

"Kostunica is nothing else but the continuation of Serb nationalist politics, the continuation of Milosevic's politics," he said.

"If he doesn't change his course of politics he will share the same fate as Milosevic."

(C)2000 Copyright Reuters Limited. 

-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed