The New York Times

Tuesday, February 15, 2000

Kosovo Peacekeepers Warn That Extremists 'Want Peace to Fail'

By CARLOTTA GALL

MITROVICA, Kosovo, Feb. 14 -- The two men in charge of this divided town, a United Nations administrator and a French general, said today that they were counting on two foreign judges to punish extremists after 12 days of violence.

Unless the violence stops, Mario Morcone, the United Nations administrator in Mitrovica, and Gen. Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, the French commander of peacekeeping troops in northern Kosovo, said they fear that ethnic relations will be poisoned permanently.

General de Saqui de Sannes, who has blamed the violence on both sides, said individuals were instigating attacks purposely to escalate the violence and to destroy the last multiethnic town in Kosovo where Serbs and Albanians are still living side by side, if uneasily.

"There are extremists who want the peace to fail," he said in an interview at his headquarters. While the violence consists of "isolated acts," he said, the strategy is to escalate tensions and intolerance. "I am worried that we may be in the process of an escalation of intolerance," he said.

Some Albanians have wanted to push the Serbs in northern Mitrovica and beyond out of Kosovo, and some Serbs have wanted to do the opposite -- to push the Albanians remaining among them south of the Ibar river, which divides Mitrovica, in order to create a pure Serbian area in northern Kosovo, he said. "The people are hostages to this," he said.

Mr. Morcone said that it was now clear who the troublemakers were and that it was critical to move against them. A judge and a prosecutor, both foreigners, were arriving to start dealing with the dozens of people arrested during Sunday's violence. "You may well see more arrests in the following days," he said.

"We need to arrest people and remove them from the scene. We know the people who are involved," he said. "For me it has to be the solution, not only for me here, but for all of Kosovo."

French troops rounded up and arrested 46 people -- 45 Albanians and one Serb -- on Sunday after a day of furious firefights between NATO-led peacekeepers and local gunmen. A dozen were quickly released, General de Saqui de Sannes said, and the rest were being questioned.

Suggesting that some Serbs would also be arrested, Mr. Marcone said: "Yesterday was a bad day for the Albanians, but that will not be all."

For whatever reason, Albanians engaged the French in heavy firefights, and in the resulting melee two French soldiers were wounded.

According to the general, a crowd of Albanians gathered Sunday morning near a French guard post after a grenade exploded and wounded five Albanians. The crowd began throwing stones at French soldiers who then cordoned off the area. Then a man appeared from a house, shouted at the people to get down, and fired directly at the soldiers, hitting one in the stomach and a second as he moved to react, the general said.

The soldiers pursued the man but did not catch him. There ensued several hours of shooting as French soldiers moved into the district and came under fire from several directions. Eventually they surrounded some 18 people in a house and got them to surrender. They found only one weapon in the house, but since then have seized more weapons during house searches, the general said.

There were women and minors among those arrested, he added. One old woman was found to be concealing a Kalashnikov rifle under her skirts, he said. Soldiers also stopped a local ambulance driving towards Mitrovica today and discovered 180 grenades and antitank rockets inside, the general recounted.

During the fighting Sunday a group of some 30 armed Albanians also tried to ford the Ibar river to the west of the city, but were spotted and deterred with warning shots, a spokesman for the French force said.

The events are likely to aggravate relations between the French troops and the ethnic Albanians here. Thousands flocked today to the burial of the one man killed by French troops during the fighting Sunday.

Avni Haradinaj, 35, a former guerrilla fighter of the Kosovo Liberation Army and a local hero, was buried with full honors by his former comrades in arms. His coffin, draped in the red Albanian flag, was carried up the hill to the edge of a wood outside the city, through a crowd of some 3,000 mourners.

The Albanian mayor of Mitrovica, Bajram Rexhepi, who said he had been a good friend of the dead man, said Mr. Haradinaj was unarmed when he was shot by French soldiers and was in Mitrovica visiting his sisters. "There were four people with him and they explained that he had no weapon at the moment he was killed," he said.

General de Saqui de Sannes insisted that Mr. Haradinaj was armed and was shooting at the soldiers when he was shot.

The general tried to reassure the Albanians of French neutrality. "If we were shot at by Albanians, it is difficult to arrest Serbs," he said.

In the few weeks since he took command, peacekeeping troops have raided a Serb bar that has frequently been identified as a hangout for troublemakers and paramilitaries. They also arrested a man close to the Serb leader of north Mitrovica for possessing a telescopic sight, and expelled him from the city for 20 days under a special resolution introduced by the United Nations last year, the general said.

The general defended his troops' actions on the night of Feb. 3, when Serb mobs rampaged through the city and left eight Albanians dead. The peacekeepers worked hard to contain the violence, he said, blockading the city to prevent outsiders from adding to the violence, and evacuating Albanians and foreigners to safety. "If the troops had not acted as they did, it would have been a lot worse, a real massacre," he said.

The need now is for a political solution, for institutions and money, to lift the economy and deny extremists an open field, the general said. "I cannot do much more," he warned. "I cannot stop someone throwing a grenade."