Global Policy Forum

By Shaban Buza

Kosovo's U.N. governor on Wednesday suspended two generals and 10 other officers of an ethnic Albanian-dominated successor force to the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, angering ex-rebel chiefs. Harri Holkeri, the Finnish head of the province's U.N.-led administration, said he took the decision as a result of its enquiry into a bomb attack in April on a railway in a part of Kosovo populated mainly by minority Serbs.

But the head of the civilian emergency Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), former guerrilla chief of staff Agim Ceku, said there was no proof the suspended officers were involved and made clear the move would be ignored. "This decision is unacceptable for us and as such will not be taken into consideration," Ceku told reporters after meeting Holkeri and other top Western officials in Kosovo, which remains legally party of Serbia and Montenegro.

It was the toughest action yet against members of the 3,000-strong KPC since it was set up four years ago, replacing the rebel army that fought against Slobodan Milosevic's forces in a conflict that ended with NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. The corps was designed to provide a civilian role for former rebels, tasked with humanitarian missions such as reconstruction and disaster relief. Many independence-seeking ethnic Albanians see it as a nucleus of a future Kosovo army.

Holkeri did not give details of the enquiry into the attack in northern Kosovo, in which two suspected bombers were killed. A shadowy group called the Albanian National Army (ANA) claimed responsibility. But he said the findings "in respect of illegal activities" were sufficiently serious to merit a police investigation and a six-month suspension of the officers pending its results.

"This is the approach taken by European institutions when serious allegations are made against their members," he said in a joint statement with the commander of the NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, German General Holger Kammerhoff.

The two suspended KPC generals, Nuredin Lushtaku and Rrahman Rama, were top guerrilla commanders during the war. Holkeri said he counted on Ceku's full cooperation. But Ceku said Holkeri had taken a wrong decision. Five KPC officers were suspended in 2001 after they appeared on a U.S. black list of people accused of stoking Balkan instability.

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