The New York Times

Thursday, June 17, 1999

U.S. Holding KLA to Weaponry Pledge

By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States will hold the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army to its pledge to surrender heavy weaponry as NATO forces take control in Kovoso province, a senior State Department official said.

``Our attitude toward the KLA is to hold them to their commitments,'' James Dobbins said Wednesday. Dobbins oversees U.S. policy in the Balkans.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary William Cohen planned a second day of discussions with his Russian counterpart aimed at defusing an embarrassing standoff between NATO and Russian forces in at the airport outside Pristina, the capital of the Serbian province. Russian peacekeepers rushed into Kosovo ahead of NATO last weekend, and continue to hold the key airfield.

The KLA fought a guerrilla war against the Serbs in a drive for independence, but has so far mostly acquiesced in NATO's plan to leave Kosovo as a largely autonomous province within Serbia and greater Yugoslavia.

A peace pact negotiated between NATO and the Belgrade government of Slobodan Milosevic calls for the KLA to be ``demilitarized'' but not disarmed. That has been interpreted to mean the KLA may keep most small arms such as rifles but must relinquish mortars or other more powerful weaponry.

Leaders of the ethnic Albanian insurgents have reaffirmed they will cooperate with NATO forces trying to keep peace in Kosovo, Dobbins said. But the KLA leadership may not be in control of every rebel unit to guarantee the weapons surrenders, Dobbins told a seminar at the U.S. Institute of Peace, a government-financed research group.

In one of their first peacekeeping activities, U.S. Marines took weapons from about 200 KLA fighters Wednesday. Rebels in the farming village of Zegra first refused to yield weaponry but relented when threatened by armored personnel carriers and Cobra attack helicopters, Marine Capt. David Eiland said in Kosovo.

Six leaders of the KLA group who were taken away in handcuffs were later released, a Pentagon spokesman said today. They were not charged, and no one was injured during the confrontation.

In a separate incident, American forces picked up three Serbs who were accused by locals of war crimes. A U.S. military spokesman in Macedonia, Capt. Paul Swiergosz, said military counterintelligence officers questioned the men and decided to release them. The Pentagon today confirmed the men's release.

An international war crimes tribunal indicted Milosevic and four senior associates for allegedly forcing some ethnic Albanians from their homes and massacring others.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Mike Doubleday said NATO forces have come upon or heard about 90 suspected mass grave sites since seizing control of the Kosovo province from retreating Serbs in recent days.

Serb forces were given an extra day to vacate central Kosovo because of logistical problems that included clogged roads, but Sunday's deadline for all Serb forces to vacate the province still holds, Doubleday said.