Yugoslavia Warned to Stay Out of Kosovo

International peacekeeping forces in Kosovo issued a strong warning to the Serb-led Yugoslav military Monday against trying to reenter the province.

Maj. Ole Irgens, spokesman for the NATO-led KFOR peacekeepers, said that recent disturbances in the divided northern Kosovo city of Kosovska Mitrovica “seem to have been carefully orchestrated” and could be an attempt by Serbian paramilitary groups to destabilize the region.

While denying that the move was linked to the Yugoslav threats, Irgens said that KFOR troops will hold training exercises in rural Kosovo over the next two weeks.

The KFOR warning came after a top Yugoslav military commander threatened last week to send his army back into Kosovo. Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic complained that KFOR troops were not living up to the agreement that ended the war, and left a door open for a limited Yugoslav military return to areas deemed of vital interest to Serbs.

With the upcoming deadline Sunday for the demilitarization of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, there have been rumblings in Serbia proper that Yugoslav troops should reenter Kosovo on Monday. And there has been growing pressure by the Serbs and Russia to dissolve the KLA instead of allowing it to be converted into a national guard-style unit, as currently planned.

Western diplomats said privately that they weren’t taking the Serbian threats seriously. But Irgens warned the Yugoslav military to stay put.

“Any unauthorized attempts to return [Yugoslav] forces to Kosovo will be prevented by KFOR, by force if necessary,” Irgens said. The return of Serbian soldiers “will happen when KFOR judges the time to be right. . . . The time is not yet right,” he said.

Rexhep Selimi, 28, minister of public order in Kosovo’s unrecognized ethnic Albanian provisional government, dismissed the Serbian warnings.

“We know their threats better than anyone,” said Selimi, a former KLA fighter. “If they have in mind taking on NATO in Kosovo, then their threat is ridiculous. . . . This is aimed only to destabilize Kosovo politically.”

Still, Selimi said the threat can only fuel more disturbances such as those that racked Kosovska Mitrovica last week, when nearly 200 people--mostly ethnic Albanians--were injured in clashes among ethnic Serbs, Albanians and French peacekeepers and one Albanian was killed. The clashes ended only after KLA leaders ordered the ethnic Albanians to stop demonstrating, fearing that the protests imperiled the few Albanian families already repatriated to the northern part of the city.

Serbs are in the majority on the north side, and even though NATO opposes ethnic-based partitioning of Kosovo, Selimi said, the Ibar River through the heart of the city has become an informal border.

The conflict could increase as ethnic Albanians continue to press for their right to return to their former homes in the Serb-controlled north, he said.

“If the situation continues, and the initiative is left to the citizens, we are not going to be able to control the masses,” he said. “The violence will increase.”