Detainees to Be Freed in Kosovo

Cheering relatives, friends and supporters of 145 ethnic Albanians who had been held prisoner elsewhere in Serbia greeted their arrival Tuesday in the province of Kosovo. Most of the detainees were expected to be released today by international authorities.

More than 2,000 ethnic Albanian prisoners--many of them suspected guerrilla fighters--were moved out of the province in mid-1999, before peacekeepers entered it after the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s air war to prevent the repression of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority.

Most of the detainees were gradually released, and Tuesday’s transfer means that virtually none remain in Serbia, according to authorities in Belgrade, the capital of both Yugoslavia and Serbia, its main republic.

Serbian authorities had charged most of the prisoners with terrorism or ordinary crimes, but ethnic Albanians in Kosovo viewed almost all of them as political detainees or hostages.

The release fulfills one of the key conditions demanded by U.S. legislation in order for Belgrade to continue receiving American aid beyond the end of this month.

Michael Steiner, the head of the United Nations administration in Kosovo, welcomed the transfer.

“Those who have not committed crimes will be released, most of them tomorrow, the rest within weeks, not months,” Steiner said.

Those determined to be guilty of crimes “will serve out their sentences not in Serbia [proper] but here in Kosovo,” Steiner said.

Until the prisoners’ arrival Tuesday, many people in Kosovo had believed that about 500 ethnic Albanians were still being held elsewhere in Serbia. But in a sign of increasing acceptance of the idea that the total might be much smaller, Radio Television 21, an Albanian-language station in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, referred to Tuesday’s transfer as covering “all” prisoners.

Although the prisoner release should help the Serbian government’s standing with Washington and other foreign governments, the most important condition in the U.S. financial aid legislation is that Yugoslavia cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. There has been widespread speculation in Belgrade that Serbian authorities might arrest several war crimes suspects and transfer them to the tribunal by early next week in an effort to satisfy that requirement. About $40 million of badly needed aid is at stake.

But the issue of extradition of war crimes suspects has become entangled in domestic politics amid a deepening power struggle between Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Djindjic is seen as more willing to cooperate with the tribunal than is Kostunica.

There are fears that if Djindjic orders such arrests despite Kostunica’s opposition, a full-scale political crisis could erupt in Belgrade, with uncertain results for political and economic reforms in the country.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher praised the prisoner transfer as “an important step forward in the establishment of the rule of law in the region.” He added, however, that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had not yet decided whether Belgrade had met the conditions of the financial aid law.

Tuesday’s transfer did not include ethnic Albanians arrested for crimes committed outside Kosovo, said Goran Jovicic, a Serbian government official. He was referring primarily to prisoners detained as a result of fighting between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and government forces in southern Serbia’s Presevo Valley from mid-1999 to last year.

Seven ethnic Albanian prisoners from Kosovo declined to be transferred, the Serbian Justice Ministry said.

U.N. buses carrying the prisoners entered Kosovo at a crossing where several hundred people had gathered to welcome them. The buses did not stop but went on to the Dubrava prison near the town of Istok, where the prisoners were to spend the night. Along the route were thousands of people cheering and waving red-and-black Albanian flags.

Belgrade officials referred to the transfer as an exchange and expressed hope that the U.N. administration in Kosovo would allow at least some of 38 Serbs imprisoned here to serve out their sentences elsewhere in Serbia.

Steiner said he did not consider the transfer part of an exchange.

Leaders of Serbs in Kosovo issued a statement expressing displeasure with the release. Serbian media in Belgrade quoted displaced Serbs from Kosovo who complained that all the ethnic Albanian prisoners were being freed while 1,300 Kosovo Serbs remain missing.

Some ethnic Albanians in Kosovo were also dissatisfied.

“Serbs got away again with a good deal,” said Lirak Celaj, a Kosovo lawmaker. “They’re using this type of thing right before the deadline. . . . Then they get great rewards, much more than what they deserve.”

Staff writer Holley reported from Warsaw and special correspondent Gjoci from Pristina. Special correspondent Zoran Cirjakovic in Belgrade contributed to this report.