UN ACCUSES KOSOVO VIOLENCE INSTIGATORS OF `CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY`
PRISTINA, March 24 (ONASA/AFP) - The UN mission chief in Kosovo accused the instigators of riots that claimed 28
lives in the Serbian province last week of carrying out "severe crimes against humanity." Harri Holkeri told
members of Kosovo's minority Serb community on Tuesday that the international community was "totally
determined to find the perpetrators, to find those people who are behind those kind of things, because they have tried
to destroy the whole future of Kosovo. "They are responsible for severe crimes against humanity." There is
also evidence that those behind the violence with also left 600 injured "had a ready-made plan", he told Serbs
in Obilic, a community near Pristina United Nations police said nearly 200 suspects have been arrested since riots last
week in the UN-administered Serbian province divided by animosities between the Albanian majority and Serbian minority.
An international and a local policeman serving in the 10,000-strong police were killed late Tuesday while on patrol in
northern Kosovo when their vehicle was sprayed with gunfire, said UN police spokesman Derek Chappell. He said it was
unclear whether the attack, in which an interpreter was also seriously injured, was connected to the wave of
inter-ethnic violence. Thousands gathered for the burial of four ethnic Albanians killed in the worst clashes in the
Balkan erritory since the end of the 1999 war in which NATO intervened to end a Serbian crackdown on the ethnic Albanian
population. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer on Monday accused Kosovo ethnic Albanians of orchestrating
violence against minority Serbs which drove thousands from their homes last week. "What happened last week,
orchestrated and organised by extremist factions in the Albanian community, is unacceptable," he said during a trip
to Kosovo. Scheffer stopped short of calling the violence "ethnic cleansing", the expression used last week by
the NATO military commander for eastern Europe, Admiral Gregory Johnson, as well as Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav
Kostunica and Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Holkeri, a former Finnish prime minister, told US radio that the
term "ethnic cleansing" was too strong. The foreign minister of Serbia-Montenegro Goran Svilanovic on Monday
complained to United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan about alleged attempts by Holkeri to play down the violence.
"Declarations which diminish the alarming situation in Kosovo do not contribute to stabilisation, but on the
contrary encourage extremists who do not want peace," he wrote. Unrest subsided over the weekend after some 2,000
additional NATO soldiers were rushed into the southern Serbian province to reinforce the NATO-led KFOR international
peacekeeping force. Thirty Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries and 286 houses were set on fire. Eighty houses, 11
churches and monasteries and 25 other buildings were otherwise damaged. Four of last week's victims were laid to
rest in the village of Shipol next to fellow ethnic Albanians killed by Serb forces during the 1998-99 war and seen as
martyrs by Albanians. The riots took place following unconfirmed reports that Serbs had been responsible for three
Albanian children drowning in a river. The violence has seriously damaged hopes that the two communities can live side
by side. Since the 1999 NATO intervention, which enabled some 200,000 ethnic Albanian refugees to return to Kosovo, the
equivalent number of Serbs has been driven from theirs as Albanians sought revenge on their former oppressors. Some
80,000 remain. In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova said
Kosovo must have independence without compromise: "Everyone realizes by now that it is clear that independence from
Serbia is vital for Kosovo and its inhabitants." The violence has brought suggestions that the northern part of
Kosovo around Kosovska Mitrovica should become part of Serbia proper in order to allow independence for the rest of the
province with an largely ethnically Albanian population. But Rugovo said this was out of the question. As part of
efforts to end the 1999 conflict the province's final status was left unresolved, and the international community
has moved gingerly on addressing the issue lest it spark renewed violence. The UN Security Council is to decide the
question of Kosovo's final status after the Kosovo government meets a set of democratic benchmarks including
protecting minority rights of the Serb community, with talks previously expected to begin next year.
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