20000113

Kosovo needs

more international

police for security

UNITED NATIONS: Although violence is declining in Kosovo, the Yugoslav province remains extremely dangerous for ethnic minorities and desperately needs more international police, a senior United Nations official said.

The official, speaking at a press briefing on condition not be identified, said the level of violence has declined by "orders of magnitude" since a Nato-led peacekeeping operation entered Kosovo in June.

The international troops, coupled with a UN-led civilian administration, moved into Kosovo after a 78-day Nato air campaign ended an 18-month crackdown on Albanian separatists and forced Yugoslav troops out of the province.

While there were 40 to 50 major ethnic crimes, especially murders, each week when the peacekeepers arrived, the number has gradually decreased to three to five major crimes each week, the UN official said.

And while tens of thousands of Serbs fled Kosovo to other parts of Serbia in the first weeks of the peacekeeping operation, the exodus has stopped and small numbers of Serbs have actually begun to return, he said.

The official attributed the decline in violence to the arrival of Nato troops and United Nations police, the migration of small Serbian communities to large, more secure villages, as well as a cooling of tempers with the passage of time.

"It is still very dangerous to be a minority," the official stressed. "What crime there is focuses disproportionately on ethnic minorities".

Yugoslavia on Tuesday disputed UN claims of improved security, saying the province's Serb minority remains in danger.

In a letter to the Security Council, Belgrade's UN envoy Vladislav Jovanovic criticised a report last month by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that "good progress" had been made by Nato and the UN Mission in Kosovo in disarming Albanian fighters and establishing civilian rule.ÑAP