Peace Deal Disappoints Kosovo Separatists

KUKES, Albania — Moments after the announcement Thursday that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had accepted an international peace plan for Kosovo, 80 fatigue-clad members of the Kosovo Liberation Army buried one of their fallen combatants with a nine-gun salute and a vow to keep on fighting.

“He died fighting for freedom,” a KLA rebel commander said over the coffin of Avdurraman Gerdallaj as NATO bombs resonated on the nearby Kosovo border. “We, his friends, will liberate our country.”

But the plan that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization presented to Milosevic does not call for an independent Kosovo. Instead, it calls for disarmament of the KLA, in effect putting the ethnic Albanian rebel army out of commission.

The KLA leadership is expected to endorse the deal crafted by its allies in NATO and will have no choice but to agree to give up its guns once a 47,900-member international peacekeeping force moves into the separatist Serbian province.

The rebel movement has proven unpredictable, however. Its leadership has been divided, and Balkan experts are uncertain how the relatively new force will react, particularly during the early stages of an agreement.

The KLA’s supporters responded with stunned disbelief Thursday to news of a deal that they believe sold them short. After so many deaths and the forced expulsion of more than a million ethnic Albanians in the past 10 weeks, KLA members and radicalized refugees said they want nothing less than independence for their province.

“We already had autonomy, and we are all dying,” said Xhavit Dervishi, a KLA supporter from the Kosovo town of Prizren. “In three or five years, when NATO leaves, we will have to fight again.”

His sentiments were seconded throughout crowded refugee camps, where ethnic Albanians driven from their homes by Serbian gunmen gathered around battery-powered radios to hear the news. Disappointment was drawn on the refugees’ sunburned faces; anger shone from their eyes, bloodshot from weeks of exposure to the wind and dust.

“This is the worst thing,” said Sadri Kralani, a 60-year-old refugee sitting on a blanket outside his tent. “They killed us. Massacred us. It is impossible to live together again. . . . We hoped we were going to have an independent Kosovo.”

Through clenched teeth, Mujdin Halimi, 39, said: “This deal is nothing. We do not believe the Serbs anymore. We want to have our army.”

Despite recent improvements, the KLA still falls far short of an army. The rebel force first drew international attention in the spring of 1998 with a series of attacks on Yugoslav army and police units in Kosovo and along the province’s border with Albania. At the time, the ragtag rebels were denounced as terrorists by Washington, which prefers pacifist ethnic Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova.

But the KLA drew new recruits from among the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo and financial support from the Albanian diaspora. It smuggled arms into the country from northern Albania and took control of a third of the province before Milosevic responded last summer with a major offensive that threw about 250,000 civilians from their homes.

In October, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke brokered a cease-fire that quickly disintegrated, and when the international community convened Kosovo peace talks in Rambouillet, France, in February, the KLA was seated at the negotiating table.

Under pressure from Washington, the KLA approved the deal, but the Serbs rejected it. NATO responded with the bombing, which Milosevic answered with a stepped-up campaign of “ethnic cleansing,” which drove ethnic Albanians from the province and drained the KLA’s sea of support inside Kosovo.

But ethnic cleansing proved to be a tremendous recruitment tool for the KLA, which has obliterated any political base Rugova had and become virtually the sole representative of Kosovo Albanians.

The KLA is believed to have grown dramatically in the past two months to number more than 17,000 men and women, according to U.S. government figures. It also has a new commander, Agim Ceku, a former officer in the Yugoslav and Croatian armies.

Recently, the rebels have been seen in new uniforms and with truckloads of new weapons in the nearby town of Krume.

The U.S. has continued to be ambivalent toward the KLA. The Clinton administration has opposed giving weapons to the rebel group, believing that to do so would further destabilize the region. The U.S. does not support Kosovo’s claim to independence, which would threaten not only Macedonia, which has a large ethnic Albanian population, but also Serbia and Greece.

But the government did issue an intelligence finding that allows the CIA to liaise with and advise the KLA. The U.S. insists that it is not providing any weapons to the KLA.

Political observers say the KLA will have to accept any decision by NATO to end the war with this agreement.

“They’re going to have no choice,” said author Tim Judah, a Balkans expert. “They are hardly strong enough to resist NATO.”

But he said both the Serbs and the KLA will test the peace deal.

“There will be problems as the Serbs are drawing down and before the international forces move in; there will be a vacuum and revenge killings,” Judah predicted.

Other Western observers say they fear that the KLA will bury weapons and ammunition and try to keep depots in northern Albania, treating the deal as a cease-fire rather than a peace agreement.

Many refugees say that is not a bad idea.

“I don’t think the KLA should give up its guns until we have an independent Kosovo,” said Avzi Kukaj, 26, who worked in a nursery before he was expelled from his village near Prizren. “The KLA must exist.”

Times staff writer Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this report.