Washington Post

Monday, February 7, 2000

U.N., NATO Move To Calm Kosovo City

By R. Jeffrey Smith

KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Yugoslavia, Feb. 6 -- Top U.N. and NATO officials promised tonight to send more troops and police to this ethnically riven Kosovo city, to crack down on political extremists, and to maintain an evening curfew in the aftermath of the sudden violence here last week that left nine ethnic Albanians dead and several dozen Serbs wounded.

The pledges came after ethnic Albanians attending the funeral for a 46-year old victim, Nerimane Gjaka, complained bitterly that a company of French peacekeeping troops responsible for protecting them had not responded for to their calls for help. She died after being rescued from a Serbian mob by some Americans assigned to the U.N. police force, who intervened.

Gjaka died from a shrapnel wound caused by one of four grenades tossed into an apartment containing three families, which also wounded her 13-year old daughter and two other children. A total of three injured people died in the local hospital, causing some community leaders to say that French inaction contributed to the deaths. The incident was the most deadly armed confrontation between Serbs and ethnic Albanians since the Kosovo war ended last June with the arrival of NATO peacekeepers.

After meeting separately this afternoon with local Serbian and ethnic Albanian leaders, U.N. administrator Bernard Kouchner vowed that the international community would not give up its efforts to promote ethnic reconciliation here. Kouchner said the local leaders pledged to try to calm tensions, although Serbian officials have organized a street protest for Monday and the ethnic Albanian leader refused to meet with his Serbian counterpart.

The senior NATO official in Kosovo, German army Gen. Klaus Reinhardt, said in an interview that not only would additional troops be sent here but that he would try to "internationalize" security patrols, reducing the burden on French troops here. Angry, rock-throwing, ethnic Albanians injured 11 French soldiers standing guard on Saturday at a bridge over the Ibar River, which bisects the city.

The area to the north, where all of the violence occurred, is controlled largely by Serbs--including some who NATO and U.N. officials say have been acting on orders from Belgrade. The area to the south is populated almost entirely by ethnic Albanians and controlled by the United Nations.

This afternoon, an unusually mild and sunny winter's day, hundreds of young ethnic Albanians gathered at the southern end of the bridge and shouted jeers and insults at the French NATO soldiers deployed in the middle. But stinging whiffs of the tear gas fired during similar demonstrations in recent days wafted through the air and kept many of the protesters from staying long.

Many ethnic Albanians here said they are angry at the French soldiers not only for their slow response last week, but also for barring access to the north section of town to thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled or were expelled from their homes there last spring when Serbian and Serb-led Yugoslav forces launched a brutal campaign to drive Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority from the province. Kosovska Mitrovica is the largest city in northern Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

"It's a problem of the paralysis of life; I can't be free in all parts of Kosovo," said Erhan Vetmi, 30, as he stood at the edge of the bridge. Vetmi said he is a cousin of Nerimane Gjaka. "We are here to keep from forgetting that there is another part of town, 50 meters [yards] away, that is part of Kosovo. All this trouble is happening because of the French."

But Kouchner and Reinhardt defended the French troops, who they said were caught in the middle of ethnic tensions that had seemed to be slowly diminishing--until the violence erupted Thursday and polarized the two sides. Both said an official inquiry into the cause of the violence was still underway, but other Western officials said it appeared that the Serbian rampage began shortly after two grenades were tossed into a Serbian-owned cafe, wounding at least 11 patrons.

That attack came a day after a rocket-propelled grenade struck a bus filled with Serbs near Kosovska Mitrovica, killing two people. Kouchner denounced the bus attack as a coward's act and called it "absolutely disgusting and unacceptable." He said he was not ready to assign blame for Thursday's rampage but said it fit a pattern of provocation and subsequent violence meant to "restart the spirit of revenge.

As a result of the latest violence, nearly 400 ethnic Albanians were evacuated from the northern part of town, accentuating the city's ethnic division. But Reinhardt, noting that he is a native of Berlin, a city that was divided for nearly half a century, said that his "whole interest is to get more movement" between the city's halves and that his top priority this week will be to ensure that the evacuees can return. .

Bajram Rexhepi, an ethnic Albanian leader, said after meeting with Kouchner that senior U.N. and NATO officials had promised that all ethnic Albanians would be allowed to return to northern Kosovska Mitrovica "by the spring." He also said that he welcomes the addition of German, Danish and Belgian troops in the city.