Peacekeepers worry of new war in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro - Five years after international forces took over Kosovo, a sudden and sweeping spasm of violence has them worrying they are being pushed back to square one.

The rampage by ethnic Albanian mobs through Serb areas has dealt a stunning blow to the slow and painstaking effort to reduce the presence of NATO-led peacekeepers and rebuild civilian government.

Caught by surprise and stung by its failure to head off the violence or quell it fast, the military is overhauling operations.

It has taken back some powers it had ceded to the United Nations international police force. Watchtowers, barbed wire and barricades are going up again. Commanding officers across the province are meeting ethnic Albanian leaders in groups, demanding they exert their moral authority or be held responsible for any further violence.

The two-day rampage in mid March hit all the major towns, leaving 28 dead, 600 wounded and hundreds of homes and churches in ruins.

Though the top U.N. official in Kosovo, Harri Holkeri, has said efforts to rebuild a multiethnic society are not over, interviews with U.N. officials, diplomats and other officials speaking on condition of anonymity show a mission in uproar, shocked at the strength of extremist elements of the ethnic Albanian population.

"In terms of Kosovo's prospects ... (the violence) is an absolute disaster," said Alex Anderson, the project director in Kosovo for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels think tank.

Although the province has quieted down, attackers ambushed U.N. police and killed two officers in northern Kosovo last week, and NATO says it is deploying 2,600 troops to augment the 18,500-strong international peacekeeping force.

NATO and the United Nations took over in 1999 after Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown, in which an estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians died. The conflict ended when the Serbian leader accepted a peace plan to stop NATO's 78-day bombing of his country. Tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo, leaving about 100,000 in the midst of a population of 2-million ethnic Albanians.

But although Kosovo is under U.N. control, Serbia-Montenegro has sovereignty.

Ethnic Albanians have grown frustrated with this state of limbo, and the failure of international officials to deliver what they prize above all else: independence. Now radical parties are tapping into that anger.

Kosovo society "has lost hope that the international bureaucrats can work out a serious plan," said Ylber Hysa, head of Kosovo Action for Civic Initiative, a think tank.

Swedish Brig. Gen. Anders Braennstroem's fury is evident as he describes some of his soldiers narrowly escaping death in the rampage, and he vows to meet any further violence with force.

"I am going to protect the minorities that were nearly killed and ethnically cleansed last week," he said. "And I will use every means I have. I have 3,000 soldiers with weapons in their hands."

Weapons were used to stop the recent violence, but both NATO and U.N. police sources suggest the response next time will be more aggressive.

Investigations show elements of organization in the unrest. Buses ferried some rioters to staging points, the Associated Press reported, quoting Western diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity, and Braennstroem said the way objects were thrown at riot police smacked of training.

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