April 30, 2000
Pristina, Yugoslavia - Diplomats said Saturday they would recommend that the United Nations Security Council renew a resolution governing Kosovo when plans for the province's future come under review in June.
Anwarul Chowdhury of Bangladesh, the head of a mission of eight diplomats who wrapped up a visit to Kosovo on Saturday, said the UN mission was doing "good work." "It needs our backing in the Security Council," he said. "No useful purpose will be served by adapting or changing" the resolution governing Kosovo.
Chowdhury's remarks came on the same day that French peacekeepers clashed with rioting Serbs in the ethnically divided city of Kosovska Mitrovica.
The Security Council resolution governing Kosovo was adopted last year after NATO launched a 78-day air attack to halt Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's oppression of ethnic Albanians.
The resolution established a peacekeeping operation but said only that the goal was to establish "substantial autonomy and self-government" pending "a final settlement" of the province's status.
For ethnic Albanians, who make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo's people, the only acceptable "final status" is independence. Serbs still see their future as part of Yugoslavia. The top UN representative in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, has asked the Security Council to set clear goals.
In another reminder of the fragile nature of peace in Kosovo, French peacekeepers clashed with hundreds of Serbs on Saturday in a suburb of Kosovska Mitrovica, touching off a melee that destroyed a UN police car and damaged 17 other UN vehicles.
The riot began after peacekeepers brought about 80 ethnic Albanians to the predominantly Serb, northern part of the town to visit the homes they had fled last year. A standoff developed between the two groups, after the Serbs claimed that some of the Albanians were not former residents. "We sent some soldiers to keep the situation quiet," said Lt. Mathieu Mabin, a spokesman for French forces.
