U.N. Probes Coercion in Serb Home Sales

U.N. police are investigating several fellow officers suspected of pressuring Serbs to sell their homes to ethnic Albanians at prices below market value, a U.N. official said Thursday.

The inquiry was launched after Serbian media reported that two U.N. officers told Serbs that they should sell their homes to Albanians and instructed them to contact an ethnic Albanian lawyer to draw up the contracts.

Many Serbs are keen to leave Kosovo--a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic--because of attacks by ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for Serbian forces’ deadly “ethnic cleansing” campaign that sparked the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war against Yugoslavia. Serbian forces withdrew from Kosovo in June.

Serbian media identified one of the officers under investigation as John Henderson. The U.N. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that an officer with that name was under investigation.

Ekrem Smaili, the lawyer named in the reports, said that he knew Henderson but that he did not know his nationality. He said that he had no business ties with the officer and denied that the properties were being sold below market value.

On Wednesday, NATO officials spoke of the newest form of anti-Serbian intimidation--bogus lists of Serbian war crimes suspects, some signed by the banned Kosovo Liberation Army or local, self-declared Albanian police units.

“Our concern is that you could have people killed by the fact that someone hates someone else and puts their name on a list,” said a NATO spokesman, Canadian Maj. Roland Lavoie.