Albanians in Kosovo Salute KLA

Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians took to the streets of this provincial capital Saturday, converting a planned public thank-you to the Kosovo Liberation Army into what participants described as an impromptu independence celebration.

Cars loaded with young men and women waving KLA flags veered through streets choked with pedestrians, many also carrying flags or signs hailing the guerrilla fighters and promising a free Kosovo.

Groups of people singing and gunfire from automatic weapons--celebratory salvos--echoed into the night, even as rain began to fall.

The celebration came as the KLA faced demilitarization by midnight tonight and as United Nations administrators and NATO peacekeepers cemented their control over the troubled Serbian province.

Kosovo technically remains under Yugoslav sovereignty, since Serbia is Yugoslavia’s dominant republic. But U.N. officials have made the German mark an official currency in addition to the Yugoslav dinar, have appointed judges to serve in a new legal system and have imposed new customs duties to help fund the temporary U.N. civilian administration.

Although the presence of U.N. administrators and NATO forces means that Kosovo in effect has new occupiers in exchange for the departed Serbian and Yugoslav forces, ethnic Albanians said that Saturday’s celebration marked a transition from war to peace, placing them on what they said is an unblockable path toward sovereignty.

“I think it is an independence celebration,” said waiter Abdullah Konjuhi, 30, who returned to his native city from his London home last week for only the second time in seven years. “The difference is like day and night. Before, there were lots of [Serbian] soldiers and police, and now it’s free.”

Earlier, hundreds of KLA fighters marched through Pristina’s streets to the city’s sports arena, where more than 40,000 people gathered for a program that included speeches by KLA Gen. Agim Ceku and former rebel leader Hashim Thaci, now prime minister of Kosovo’s unrecognized provisional government.

Ceku thanked his soldiers and the Western forces that drove the Yugoslav army from the province--most observers believe that the overmatched KLA would have been crushed without international intervention. Still, Ceku warned that the KLA could remobilize if peace in Kosovo is threatened.

“This march [to the stadium] is not the beginning and it’s not the end,” Ceku said. “Kosovo is leaving an era of darkness and heading into an era of light. . . . Our next goal is independence.”

Thaci also thanked the KLA and NATO and called for a referendum in which he expects Albanian Kosovars to support a democratic, multiethnic Kosovo.

The former KLA, he said, “will be the defense force of the Albanian Kosovars.”

Outside the stadium, U.N. peacekeepers prevented thousands of people from storming the already filled arena. Those who couldn’t get in milled about while some climbed atop nearby walls and buildings for a better view.

Several dozen people reached the upper floors of the gutted Serbian security forces building overlooking the stadium. NATO targeted the building during its 11-week air war against Yugoslavia, and on Saturday onlookers walked gingerly around a hole through the fourth and fifth floors left by a NATO missile.

With the building’s external walls blown out, afternoon breezes whirled dust through shattered offices that to ethnic Albanians represented the nerve center of the oppression under which they lived for at least a decade.

“This building was destroyed for our benefit, and it is a pleasure to stand here and watch the ceremony,” said Gami Hyseni, 36, who climbed to the fourth floor with his sons, Agron, 9, and Driton, 7. “They will remember this for their entire lives. And they will remember that they were forced out and had to flee from their home in Pristina.”