U.N. Broadens Peacekeepers’ Authority to Maintain Order in Kosovo

Plagued by near-daily attacks on international peacekeepers, U.N. officials announced new regulations Friday allowing the troops to detain or remove anyone deemed disruptive of the peace in Kosovo.

International officials said Friday that both Russian and German soldiers had come under fire in the past 24 hours.

A sniper bullet hit a Russian soldier in the shoulder Thursday while he was on guard duty near Gnjilane in southeastern Kosovo, NATO officials said. German peacekeepers came under machine-gun fire that day, but there were no casualties, the German Defense Ministry said Friday.

The U.N. mission to Kosovo announced the new regulations in an attempt to curb such attacks, as well as rampant crime and violence pitting Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians against its dwindling Serbian population. The new regulations authorize peacekeepers and U.N. police to detain or remove anyone at any time, if such a move is deemed in the interest of maintaining order.

The regulations also will allow peacekeepers to expel people from the province, U.N. legal officials said.

More than 35,000 NATO-led troops are providing security in Kosovo, and a 3,100-member U.N. police force is being set up, along with a training school to establish a local police force.

U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s supreme commander in Europe, condemned the violence, particularly attacks on Serbs, at a news conference Friday in Pristina, the provincial capital.

“The violence has to stop,” he said, after separate meetings with Serbian Orthodox Bishop Artemije, ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova and rebel Kosovo Liberation Army commander Gen. Agim Ceku.

“We know there are a lot of hard feelings among the people living here,” Clark said. “We’ve got to take the heat out of this.”

Also Friday, Albanian Prime Minister Pandeli Majko visited Kosovo, the first trip by an Albanian government leader to the province since the creation of Albania in 1912.

Although Kosovo has long had an ethnic Albanian majority and borders on Albania, Serbian domination of the province over much of the past century thwarted visits by Albanian government leaders.

Albania, Europe’s poorest country, took in about 480,000 Kosovo refugees driven from their homes by Serbian forces. Most have since returned home.

Majko said recently that the refugee crisis had helped Albanians on both sides of the now open border get to know each other.

Majko, at 31 Europe’s youngest prime minister, was scheduled to meet with Rugova and KLA political leader Hashim Thaci.

Rugova, a rival of Thaci, told reporters earlier in the day that his Democratic League of Kosovo party, known as the LDK, was prepared to work with Thaci.

Last month, the LDK refused to take part in an interethnic transitional council, claiming that its representation was not equal to that of Thaci and his backers.