YUGOSLAVIA: NATO PEACEKEEPERS GIVE ALBANIAN GUERRILLAS ANOTHER 48 HOURS TO DEMOBILISE.

Record ID: 350098

  • Title: YUGOSLAVIA: NATO PEACEKEEPERS GIVE ALBANIAN GUERRILLAS ANOTHER 48 HOURS TO DEMOBILISE.
  • Date: 20th September 1999
  • Summary: PRISTINA, KOSOVO, SERBIA, YUGOSLAVIA (SEPTEMBER 20, 1999) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV/MV: NIGHT SHOTS EXTERIOR KFOR HEADQUARTERS; SIGN; KLA POLITICAL LEADER HASHIM ITHAQI AND OTHERS ARRIVING FOR TALKS (5 SHOTS) 0.31 2. MV: THAQI TALKING TO REPORTERS AFTER TALKS 0.39 3. GV/MV: DAY SHOTS EXTERIOR KFOR HQ; KFOR COMMANDER LIEUTENANT GENERAL SIR
  • Embargoed: 5th October 1999 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: PRISTINA AND PLLANA, KOSOVO, SERBIA, YUGOSLAVIA
  • City:
  • Country: Yugoslavia
  • Reuters ID: LVAD7UN6Q8YPJIGPUGKTS8TD0YGG
  • Story Text: Kosovo's NATO-led peacekeeping force has given ethnic
    Albanian guerrillas 48 hours more to demobilise, but warned
    they were putting the stability of the province at risk by not
    accepting its plans for their future.

    Officers of the Kosovo Liberation Army and French KFOR
    officers took part in a symbolic handover at five minutes to
    midnight.

    And a TV station went on the air for the first time since
    the end of the recent conflict.

    All-night talks on Sunday (September 19-20) failed to
    yield an agreement on how many weapons a new civil protection
    force designed to take in former members of the Kosovo
    Liberation Army should be allowed to hold.

    Under an accord between the KFOR peace force and the KLA
    signed in June, the rebels who fought for more than a year
    against Serbian rule in Kosovo were meant to have completed
    disarming and demilitarising by midnight on Sunday.

    Lieutenant General Sir Mike Jackson, the KFOR commander,
    said on Monday (September 20) he was satisfied the guerrillas
    had disarmed in accordance with the agreement, but he was
    giving them another 48 hours as a legal force to allow more
    time for talks on the weapons issue.

    Hashim Thaqi, the political leader of the KLA also widely
    known by its Albanian initials UCK, left KFOR's hilltop
    headquarters overlooking the provincial capital Pristina
    saying only that discussions would continue.

    "I very much hope that Mr Thaqi and the leadership of the
    UCK will see that their failure to accept the weapons regime
    required is in danger of unsettling the future of the vast
    majority of the UCK membership and, indeed, perhaps Kosovo's
    future as a whole," Jackson said.

    International officials are anxious that the new
    5,000-strong Kosovo Corps be as civilian in nature as
    possible, seeing it as a force to help rebuild the war-scarred
    province and assist with humanitarian emergencies.

    But many KLA members view it as the nucleus of a future
    army for an independent Kosovo.That is at odds with the
    prevailing international view that Kosovo should enjoy
    substantial autonomy, but stay within Yugoslavia.

    "The United Nations mission in Kosovo and KFOR are quite
    clear as to the strict requirements for a strong regime where
    the number of weapons allocated and control is concerned for
    the Kosovo Corps," Jackson said.

    "I regret that it has not been possible to agree on this
    matter," said Jackson, looking tired after the marathon talks.

    Jackson refused to go into detail.But KFOR has has said
    previously around 200 members of the Kosovo Corps could carry
    sidearms to protect the group's leaders and its facilities.

    One Western source familiar with the talks, which broke up
    shortly after 6 a.m.on Monday morning, said the KLA had made
    differing demands about the number of people in the Kosovo
    Corps who should carry arms.

    "There were too many demands about weapons.The number
    kept changing," he said."Thaqi's going to have to ponder this
    and consult with his own people."
    Jackson said the KLA had handed in more than 10,000
    weapons and nearly 5.5 million rounds of ammunition to storage
    sites which were now under KFOR control.

    Several international officials and military officers have
    expressed severe doubts, however, about whether the KLA has
    really handed over all its arms.

    It has never been made clear if the arms surrendered were
    those that were agreed by NATO and the KLA when they signed
    the disarmament pact in June.Many of the arms reporters have
    seen at collection centres are in poor condition or virtual
    antiques.

    If Western suspicions are correct, failure to get KLA
    leaders behind the Kosovo Corps concept would leave both KFOR
    and Kosovo civilians with some reason to fear armed
    intimidation -- including minority Serbs -- facing a
    potentially serious threat to their security, analysts say.

    KLA members on Sunday night met with French KFOR officers,
    for the final handover in a storage site in Pllana, five
    kilometres from Mitrovica.Major Ajet Bajrami of the KLA, took
    down the Albanian national flag and shook hands with French
    soldiers.They promised to rebuild Kosova together.

    Radio Television of Kosova (RTK) was on the air for the
    first time on Sunday evening from 19.00-21.00.The initial
    two-hour broadcast containing local and international news and information programmes in both Serbo-Croat and Albanian, was
    followed with great interest.

    This marks an important step towards establishing an
    independent public broadcasting service in Kosovo.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register