PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, July 16 — A U.N.-sponsored effort to bring
Kosovo’s political leaders together faltered Friday when the party of Ibrahim
Rugova, the moderate ethnic Albanian leader, boycotted the first meeting
of a provincial advisory council. RUGOVA’S DEMOCRATIC League of Kosovo
apparently stayed away in protest because the rival Kosovo Liberation Army
and another faction were to have been as strongly represented at the meeting.
Elsewhere in Kosovo, sporadic
violence, including a grenade explosion that injured 30 in the sector
patrolled by U.S. peacekeepers, further complicated attempts to re-establish
normality in the province.
Rugova’s absence Friday weakened hopes for any swift and substantial step
to give the province’s people control of their political affairs and foreshadowed
a possible power struggle between leading Kosovo political factions.
“I am sad that the LDK has chosen
not to participate in that first meeting,” Bernard Kouchner, the new U.N.
administrator for Kosovo, said at the opening of the session. “They are
unhappy about the current composition of the council.” The council convened
for three hours despite Rugova’s absence. Afterward, Kouchner said the
participants had agreed to set up a joint Serb-Albanian delegation to address
ethnic tension in certain towns and deal with the issue of prisoners held
by both sides, partly with the aim of providing information on their whereabouts.
They also agreed to jointly evaluate
applications for a multiethnic, internationally run police force.
Father Sava, a Serbian Orthodox
priest participating in the Serb delegation called the meeting a “very
good beginning and important beginning.”
Rugova arrived in Kosovo on Thursday
to great fanfare, but quietly slipped away in the evening with an aide,
saying he went to neighboring Macedonia. His quick departure disappointed
the many supporters of a man twice chosen president of Kosovo’s mainly
ethnic Albanian population in unofficial elections.
On Thursday, he had promised to
join the council providing that all “credible” parties were represented.
Rugova resents having only two
seats on the council while the rival Kosovo Liberation Army and allied
United Democratic League have four seats between them, U.N. officials said.
Two Serb representatives did show
up today, a minor victory in attempts to bridge Kosovo’s sharp ethnic divide.
The council cannot make decisions,
but will serve as an intermediary with the U.N. officials now administering
the province.
Also Friday, about 400 Yugoslav
army reservists blocked the center of Nis in central Serbia, joining a
growing number of soldiers demonstrating to demand long-overdue back pay
for their service in Kosovo.
Local media reported that the
central square in Nis, Serbia’s third largest city, was blocked for about
one hour as the reservists demanded back pay, free electricity and rent.
A similar protest was staged by
200 reservists in Krusevac, 90 miles southeast of Belgrade, the private
Beta news agency reported.
The grenade attack that injured
30 happened Thursday afternoon at a crowded market in Vitina, 25 miles
southeast of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, said Lt. Jake Kramer of
the 82nd Airborne Division. He said four people suffered serious
injuries and were taken to U.S. treatment facilities.
U.S. troops also arrested 13 ethnic
Albanians believed to be members of the KLA after finding a cache of gasoline
bombs, two grenades and several automatic weapons.
“It was clear they were going
to set some houses on fire,” Kramer said of the detained Albanians.
And in Pristina, unidentified
gunmen shot a man and a grenade exploded outside a building near the local
headquarters of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
In the central city of Goric,
a NATO patrol detained four KLA soldiers with weapons. Such detentions
have been continuing despite an agreement by the militia to turn over most
of their arms and demobilize.
The incidents coincided with a
visit to by Gen. Henry Shelton, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff,
who expressed concern about violence in the U.S. sector and attacks on
American peacekeepers.
They also underscored the difficulties
NATO troops face as they try to quell violence between ethnic Albanians
and minority Serbs in Kosovo more than a month after starting the peacekeeping
mission.
The peacekeeping force “needs
to be augmented by local police that are there 24 hours a day, seven days
a week,” Shelton said. “We don’t have enough to do that.”
