The Washington Post

Wednesday, February 9, 2000

French Troops in Kosovo Accused of Retreat

By R. Jeffrey Smith

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Feb. 8 -- United Nations policemen led by a veteran officer from Midland, Tex., charged into a jeering, chanting Serbian mob in this city in northern Kosovo last Thursday night, trying to reach several colleagues and ethnic Albanians who were under siege in an apartment building.

When one of the Serbs struck the lead officer in the back with a wooden stick, knocking him to the ground, the officer turned around, expecting to see French peacekeeping soldiers charging to his rescue. Instead, he saw their backs as they retreated toward two armored personnel carriers and a nearby apartment building, several officers said.

After cursing angrily on the police radio that the French troops had left, the officer decided he had little choice but to retreat and regroup. Hours later, a Danish military company lent needed assistance and the rescue was performed. But the bitterness lingers throughout the 65-man police force patrolling the northern quarter of this divided city, which is about 30 miles northwest of Pristina, the Kosovo capital.

"Every nationality here wants to know why they walked off and left us," an officer said, on condition he not be identified. "Everyone was calling them, but the French did not respond."

The commander of the NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, German army Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, said on Sunday that he could not fault the performance of the French troops during the worst night of violence in Kosovo since the end of the war last June.

The criticism, which echoes comments by local ethnic Albanian residents, has touched a raw nerve in the French military command, which has been responsible for NATO peacekeeping operations in northern Kosovo--including this bitterly divided city--for the past eight months. The commander of the 250-man French infantry battalion responsible for peacekeeping in northern Mitrovica, Col. Jean Philippe Bernard, and several other French officers denied the allegations. Bernard said that "most Albanians who asked for help received it."

But 11 U.N. police officers from three countries said in interviews that the soldiers fell short of fulfilling their responsibility for keeping peace and maintaining order. The officers charged in interviews here that the French soldiers had failed to provide essential support during the riot, and that the French had not adequately protected ethnic Albanians from the Serbian mob.

During the mayhem, which evidently was provoked by a grenade attack on a bar packed with Serbian patrons, at least eight ethnic Albanians were killed. Since then, more than 500 ethnic Albanians have been forced to flee to the southern side of the Ibar River, which bisects the town and forms a natural barrier between its rival Serb and Albanian enclaves.

French soldiers "could have caught these people as they came out of buildings," said one officer of the Serb assailants. "Instead, it was free sledding for the criminals."

One of the police officers reported that when he asked the commander of a group of French tanks and armored personnel carriers to follow him into the center of the city for a second attempt to rescue trapped policemen, the drivers of the vehicles instead threw them into reverse and withdrew 50 yards.

Two other officers and a local resident said French soldiers remained hunkered down in two armored personnel carriers despite "blood-curdling" screams from an ethnic Albanian woman who was being beaten nearby. Bernard and several of his men say they were indeed stationed in the area but saw no one beaten.

Several other U.N. policemen complained that the local French military hospital refused to treat any of the dozen or so ethnic Albanians wounded by gunshots or grenades, following a policy decision to reserve its beds for potential casualties among French soldiers that night. Two of the victims later died at a Moroccan military field hospital that French officers conceded lacks comparable expertise in treating war wounds.

Danish soldiers who arrived in northern Mitrovica later in the evening provided prompt and reliable assistance, in contrast to the French response, the U.N. officers said.

A local Serbian community leader, Oliver Ivanovic, defended the performance of the French troops, saying "there were too many angry people in the same place at the same time" for any NATO peacekeeping intervention to be effective. But Ivanovic added in an interview that the French troops should have been better prepared. "You have to have instincts about what's happening," he said. "They didn't have enough soldiers for what happened."

About 4,600 French troops patrol northern Kosovo, one of the five sectors in the province created by NATO when its forces entered the province last June following the withdrawal of Serb-led Yugoslav army and police units. The four other sectors are under American, British, German and Italian command. Last Thursday's riot followed a series of tit-for-tat attacks that caused U.N. officials and Serbian community leaders to warn French troops of increased dangers. On Jan. 31, three days before the riot, two ethnic Albanians in the nearby city of Srbica were killed. Two days later, a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a bus carrying Serbian civilians close to Mitrovica. Two of the passengers were killed.

But Bernard said no additional French troops were deployed on the north side of the city on Thursday, before the riot began, because commanders felt the existing number was sufficient. The riot started shortly after several grenades were tossed into a cafe packed with Serb patrons and a Serb mother claimed--falsely, as it turned out--that ethnic Albanians had taken her 12-year-old son hostage, according to Ivanovic.

Shortly after learning that a mob of as many as 700 people had gathered at the intersection of King Peter and Lola Rebara streets, Bernard ordered 300 extra soldiers dispatched to northern Mitrovica, where they helped keep peace and rescue trapped ethnic Albanians, he said.

Bernard said they got no request for assistance from U.N. police officers, a claim disputed by all of the officers interviewed, by the French liaison officer to the U.N. police, and, according to sources, by the log books at the police station. Bernard also said the only time any of them were pulled back from their posts was shortly before the arrival of the supplementary Danish battalion about 45 minutes later. Several of the policemen said that relations between the 250-member French battalion in northern Mitrovica and the relatively small U.N. force of 65 police officers here were poor before this event.

Several police officers said, for example, that French troops on Sunday afternoon declined their request for military backup to conduct a search at the Dolce Vita cafe in northern Mitrovica--a hangout for officials from Belgrade--after two witnesses had reported seeing patrons carrying grenades. A French liaison officer responded that his troops did not want to participate in such a provocative act because ethnic tensions were beginning to wane. As a result, the search was subsequently called off.

Two of the U.N. police officers who described what had happened initially were willing to allow their names to be used in this article. But they said they changed their minds after being threatened with suspension in response to pressure from the French military staff to keep quiet. One said a senior French officer threatened today to suspend all future cooperation with the police unless the officers halted the disclosures.