		Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 23 - 29 July 1998 Issue No.387
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Current issue \| Previous issue \| Site map

West waits as Kosovo violence escalates

By Maye Ostowani

The conflict in Kosovo rages on as Serb forces and members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fight for control of strategic roads, villages and major towns in the province where ethnic Albanians -- fighting for an independent Kosovo -- make up 90 per cent of the population. As the KLA grows in number and strength and gains more territory, Western powers -- the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and Italy -- are eyeing the shifting balance of power in Kosovo from the moderate leadership of Ibrahim Rugova, who is quickly losing support, to the more aggressive tactics of the KLA. While still advocating a peaceful solution and a return to negotiations between Kosovo Albanians and the Serbs, the international community is divided on how to deal with the KLA.

US envoy Richard Holbrooke, who met with KLA members in Kosovo recently, said that if the KLA can prove that they are a united, organised group, there could be a possibility of including them in negotiations with the Serbs. Germany, France, Britain and Italy seem unwilling to include the "terrorist group" in any future talks between Albanians and Serbs. Russia and Serbia are adamantly opposed to allowing the KLA to take part in the negotiations.

"They [Western powers] would be making a terrible mistake, a precedent for all international affairs, if they start out with terrorists. In that case, the terrorists become legalised," Vladimir Nesic, chargé d'affaire of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Cairo, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "It could be a possibility, but I don't think they will do it," he added.

The KLA -- which the US Defense Department says has grown steadily in the last couple of months from a few hundred members to an army of 2,000 fighters and possibly 30,000 armed supporters -- claims it is in control of half of Kosovo. "The intensification of terrorism has two main aims," said Nesic, "to gain more ground and to provoke an international reaction to condemn Yugoslavia and to call for international intervention."

This week, fighting erupted between the KLA, trying to seize the strategic town of Orahovac near the Kosovo border with Albania, and Serb police and Yugoslav army troops. The town fell under Serb control Monday after superior armed weaponry was used against the KLA fighters. Heavy Albanian KLA losses -an initial figure put the total at 110- were reported.

"They [KLA] have been trying to seize major economic and strategic locations, and to cut off roads leading from Pristina and other major towns in order to create their own free space to smuggle more weapons from Albania," explained Nesic.

In the clashes over Orahovac Sunday, Serb forces reportedly ambushed between 700 and 1,000 Albanian fighters crossing into Kosovo from Albania which left more than 30 dead. The ambassador of the Republic of Albania in Cairo, Haki Shtalbi, in an interview with the Weekly called the deaths a "tragedy" and said that among them were Kosovo Albanian civilian refugees. "The incident happened on the frontier with Albania and [thus] is a clear provocation to the territorial integrity of Albania. The Albanian government condemns these actions that are against international law," Shtalbi said. An Albanian report also stated that Serb shells had landed on Albanian territory during the fighting.

Vast amounts of ammunition and weapons, in addition to armed KLA supporters, have been crossing back and forth between Kosovo and Albania since the crisis -- which has left over 400 people killed and 300 missing -- began in February.

On the subject of arms smuggling, Shtalbi explained that the widespread civil war in Albania last year during which state institutions collapsed led to total chaos and large amounts of weapons were seized by the Albanian population. A UN disarmament report stated that 650,000 weapons, 20,000 tons of explosives and billions of bullets and artillery shells had been stolen. Shtalbi said that the Albanian government, along with the UN and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), were exerting efforts to retrieve the weapons, but he called it a "difficult task."

"The Albanian government does not support terrorism," Shtalbi clarified. "Albania does not encourage this illegal transportation of arms to Kosovo with the intention of helping the people of Kosovo to fight." He also said that the large number of refugees fleeing from Kosovo into Albania was making it more difficult to monitor the movement of weapons. According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), over 30,000 Kosovo Albanian refugees have fled to Albania and Montenegro. "To control all the routes used to transport the arms is difficult. It needs a lot of manpower and financing," he added.

It appears that the Western powers have decided to play the waiting game for now. NATO, which staged a show of force on 15 June over the skies of Albania and Macedonia, threatening military intervention unless the Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians was halted, also appears to have taken a step back. However, US officials said NATO has not totally ruled out the use of force to stop the growing civil war in Kosovo.