[ALBSA-Info] Las Vegas Sun

[Agron Alibali]

Today: April 19, 2002 at 10:00:23 PDT 
U.N. To Indict Kosovo Albanian


PRISTINA, Yugoslavia- The chief U.N. prosecutor said Friday that a Balkan war crimes tribunal that has so far focused on Serbian suspects may finish investigations into ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo later this year and hand down indictments. 
Carla del Ponte met top Kosovo officials at the end of a three-day Balkan tour in which she pressed governments in Bosnia and Serbia to hand over indicted suspects for trial in The Hague, Netherlands. 
The U.N. war crimes tribunal has been criticized for alleged bias against Serbs. Most of those indicted for crimes in the Croatian, Bosnian and Kosovo wars are Serbs held responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians. No ethnic Albanian has been publicly indicted so far for wrongdoing. 
But Del Ponte said her investigators hoped to finish probes later this year into three cases involving suspects from the Kosovo Liberation Army, a rebel group that fought for independence of the Yugoslav province. 
"I'm sure that this year we will issue the first indictment," she said. 
Standing at her side, Michael Steiner, the top U.N. official running the province, said his mission will offer full support to prosecute those responsible for war crimes, regardless of their origin. 
"There is no nationality when it comes to war crimes," Steiner said. 
Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova and Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi pledged their support. 
"We have said before that no one stands above the law," Rexhepi said. "The tribunal has the right to investigate in every place where the fighting took place." 
NATO's air war in 1999 ended former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians that left at least 10,000 of them killed. Milosevic is currently on trial in the Hague. 
A committee gathering information on crimes against humanity and violations of international law in Belgrade says 3,276 Serbs and other non-Albanians are missing since the 1998-2001 conflict in Kosovo. 
Most of the victims were killed or abducted after NATO-led peacekeepers and the United Nations took over the province in June 1999, according to the committee. 
On Friday, assailants hurled a hand grenade into the last Serb-owned restaurant in the predominantly ethnic Albanian town of Presevo in southern Serbia, near the Kosovo border. No one was injured, but the restaurant was ruined, a Yugoslav government statement said. 



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