[ALBSA-Info] {QIKSH =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=AB?=ALBEUROPA=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BB?=} Kosovo Albanians Threaten New War If Belgrade Troops Return

[Nikoll A Mirakaj]

Kosovo Albanians Threaten New War If Belgrade Troops Return 

PRISTINA, Oct 12, 2000 -- (Agence France Presse) Kosovo Albanian guerrillas would take up arms to prevent Yugoslav forces returning to their breakaway province, political leaders said Wednesday.

"If they ever came back in uniform, we'd know how to react," Naim Maloku, head of the Central Liberal Party of Kosovo and a former fighter in the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), told AFP.

"If anyone thinks the KLA is dead, they're kidding themselves," he warned.

Zoran Djindic, a close ally of the new Yugoslav president Vojislav Kostunica, said in a interview published in Belgrade that 1,200 Serb police and Yugoslav troops could return to Kosovo by the end of the year.

But Ramush Haradinaj, a former guerrilla leader and head of the Alliance for the Future of Kosovo, said the Serbian forces would be turned back at the province's frontier by fighters from Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

"If they ever tried to come they would not be able to cross the border," he said, adding: "There are NATO forces there and Kosovo Albanian forces which would be well-prepared to resist them."

Bilal Sherifi, chief of staff to Hashim Thaci, the former political chief of the KLA and now leader of the Democratic party of Kosovo, described the idea that Yugoslav troops could return as a "dream."

"This idea is over forever," he insisted.

Yugoslav personnel were to be given authorization to return to Kosovo under a UN Security Council resolution which defined terms under which the province became a UN protectorate at the end of the 1998-1999 war between the KLA and Belgrade.

But the terms did not define the number of personnel to return or the timing of such a move.

General Juan Ortuno, leader of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in charge of maintaining security in Kosovo, said that it was his decision when Yugoslav troops could return and that no discussions had begun with the new Belgrade authorities. ((c) 2000 Agence France Presse) 

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