NATO, U.N. Display Strength in Bringing Albanians Home

NATO and U.N. officials said they would proceed cautiously in returning more Kosovo Albanians to their homes in northern Kosovska Mitrovica after confronting rioting Serbs with a massive display of military muscle.

Forty-one ethnic Albanians were whisked past stone-throwing Serbs on Friday in a huge military operation to get them back to homes they had fled after violence last month in the Serb-dominated northern part of the city.

The return of the Albanian families, in a convoy of armored troop carriers, was seen as an important test of the will of NATO and the United Nations in standing up to Serbian resistance to the move.

French troops and gendarmes fired volley after volley of tear gas, and the streets of the tense northern Kosovo city echoed to the sound of stun grenades as the police and military crushed efforts by the Serbs to stop the Albanians’ return.

French officials said five French soldiers were injured by rocks, with two requiring hospital treatment. Two Serbian men and two women were injured slightly by exploding tear gas canisters, the officials said

Asked if the returns would continue today, the U.N. administrator for northern Kosovo, Mario Morcone, said: “I think not.”

This view was echoed by French Gen. Pierre de Saqui de Sannes, commander of KFOR peacekeeping forces in the dingy mining town that has become the front line of ethnic tensions between Albanians and Kosovo’s remaining Serbs.

The general said that only those Albanians who volunteered, from among hundreds who fled three predominantly Albanian apartment towers in the north, would be assisted to return.

He lamented the continuing ethnic violence between the two communities.

The 41 Albanians emerged from the armored personnel carriers looking amused and clutching small bags of belongings.