Political Head of Rebels in Kosovo Quits

In the strongest sign yet that Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian guerrillas plan to sign a peace deal, their firebrand political leader resigned in disgust Tuesday.

Because the proposed agreement doesn’t guarantee Kosovo’s independence, “it will bring the continuation of bloodshed,” hard-line nationalist Adem Demaci told reporters. Kosovo is a mainly ethnic Albanian province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

Demaci’s resignation was a victory for Washington’s strategy of recognizing the guerrilla force, and then working to moderate its demands, while trying to isolate Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

But Demaci, who has admitted having done his best to block approval of a peace agreement at last month’s talks in France between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, is convinced that history will prove him right.

“Those who sign this agreement make concessions to the Serbian regime and Milosevic, encourage him and bear responsibility for the consequences due to their weakness and illusions,” Demaci said.

Among those he singled out was Hashim Thaqi, a senior commander in the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army who heads the ethnic Albanian negotiating team. Thaqi is also expected to become Kosovo’s prime minister if peace talks succeed.

Demaci’s departure notwithstanding, the peace talks face a major hurdle: Milosevic is still hanging tough against the accord’s key element, a NATO-led peacekeeping force.

Western mediators have tried to make such a force more acceptable to him by proposing the inclusion of small contingents from neighboring countries that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and that he finds less threatening.

But Milosevic “flatly refused” to allow foreign troops in Kosovo, Knut Vollebaek, who heads the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said after meeting with the Yugoslav leader Monday.

“The reaction to my proposal for an international force was very, very negative,” said Vollebaek, who is also Norway’s foreign minister.

Vollebaek met with ethnic Albanian politicians here in Pristina, the provincial capital, Tuesday and said he thinks “the Kosovo Albanian side is likely to sign the agreement.”

The KLA accepts the accord in principle but will insist on a few key changes when the talks move to a French military base March 15, a member of the guerrillas’ high command, Sokol Bashota, said in an interview Tuesday.

For instance, the KLA will disarm only if its weapons are stored alongside Yugoslav army weapons, under the joint command of the guerrillas and NATO, Bashota said.

“There is one condition: that Yugoslav army forces can exist only in military barracks, far from towns and villages, and the weapons they have should be delivered to warehouses to be controlled by us,” insisted Bashota, who is considered a moderate among the KLA’s leaders.

“In the future, these weapons can be used only when the KLA is a well-established army.”

That day will come when Kosovo is independent and creates a state military force, Bashota said. It’s a possibility that Milosevic, and probably Western mediators, would find very hard to accept.

The proposed agreement would limit the Yugoslav army in Kosovo to 2,500 soldiers. Milosevic would have to withdraw any additional soldiers, their tanks and other weapons.

The KLA will also ask for improvements to a vague clause in the accord that fudges the question of whether ethnic Albanians will have the right to vote for independence in a referendum after a period of limited self-rule, Bashota said.

“In the agreement, there is a sentence which says that after three years’ time, the Albanian people have a right to declare their political will,” he said through an interpreter.

“But for this, we will request some details about how we can express our feelings freely after three years.”

Bashota spoke in one of two houses still habitable in his home village, near the mainly Serbian village of Kijevo, about 15 miles west of Pristina in Kosovo’s Drenica region. Fires gutted the other 40 houses after Serbian security forces seized the village last summer, he said.

“With strict issues such as the independence of Kosovo, we are not prepared to do any bargaining,” Bashota said. “It’s too heavy for us to take this responsibility. It’s a question of our history. We cannot simply walk over the blood which was spilled for Kosovo’s independence.”

More than 99% of Kosovo Albanians who voted in an underground referendum in 1991 said they wanted independence from Serbia.

“But things changed with the appearance of some individuals from the KLA who are getting prepared to approve this agreement,” Demaci said as he announced his resignation.

“These individuals have abandoned the basic principles of the KLA and the obligation toward the political will of the people of Kosovo declared in the 1991 referendum.”

Demaci, who spent 29 years in Serbian prisons for demanding freedom for Kosovo, said he didn’t devote his life to the struggle just to give up halfway.

In a bet that several of the KLA’s leaders would rather be moderate politicians, the most cooperative have been invited to Washington soon to see how good things could be if they made peace.

“I think the strategy is to make them understand there is life after the KLA,” U.S. envoy Christopher Hill said during a visit to Pristina on Monday.

For instance, a disarmed KLA could become the Kosovo Liberation Party instead, Hill suggested.