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PRISTINA - The top U.S. officer in Kosovo's peacekeeping force said on Wednesday ethnic Albanian intimidation of minority Serbs appeared organised and systematic in his operating sector.
But Brigadier General John Craddock, commander in the southeast military zone, stopped short of blaming the erstwhile guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army, the only domestic group with broad coercive means, for a spate of murders and arson.
'Rogue elements' whose links with the KLA were unclear as well as 'disaffected former KLA members' had been factors in armed violence, he told a news conference in Pristina.
'There appears to be a pattern (of intimidation). It is organised. It's more than just the neighbours just getting upset at each other,' Craddock said.
Military police in the KFOR peace force were trying to identify the perpetrators to help safeguard Serb enclaves, he said.
Well over half of Kosovo's pre-war 200,000 Serb minority has fled the Yugoslav province for fear of persecution by the Albanian majority since Belgrade's security forces withdrew and NATO peacekeepers arrived in June.
Craddock was asked about reports of KLA militants threatening Kosovo's interim U.N. administration by forming shadowy 'ministries' in a so-called provisional government claiming police and taxation powers.
'We've seen indications of...a police organisation known as the MRP or MRK coming under the (self-styled) Ministry of Public Order,' he said.
'We've not seen them functioning (as police). They understand the conditions of the (U.N.) undertaking that there can be no (KLA) police...But this is not accepted lightly by the KLA leadership,' Craddock acknowledged.
He said the KLA had formed regional civil administrations where the United Nations had been slow to implement its mandate.
Craddock was pressed to explain proliferating discoveries of secret arms caches, violating the KLA's agreement to disarm and disband by mid-September, and increasing ethnic Albanian confrontations with KFOR peacekeepers.
'There is another element out there among the KLA and other parties and factions we deal with. It may be criminal, political or military, we're not sure. We know there are disaffected people who have left the KLA and (insist on) bearing arms.'
He said the KLA in his sector was 'generally compliant' with the disarmament schedule but only with KFOR prodding.
'It's sometimes slower than we like. We sometimes find KLA soldiers in uniform (illegally) outside assembly areas, not under direction so far as we can tell, either because they think they won't be caught or because they have a chip on their shoulder
'That's probably a rogue element or an attitude problem. But overall the leaders understand what they signed up to do.'
UNMIK, as the U.N. administration is known, would overcome paramilitary challenges to its authority most effectively by deploying a promised 3,100 armed international police without further delay, according to Craddock.
'My soldiers are not policemen. I have military police but they are stretched. We only have 16 U.N. police so far in our sector. We will take all we can get as soon as we can get them.'
Craddock also rejected ethnic Albanian allegations that Russian peacekeepers deployed in parts of the U.S.-controlled sector were biased towards Serbs.
'There appears to be a significant disinformation campaign against the Russian unit. There is a preconceived Albanian notion that the Russians will favour the Serbs,' he said.
'We have not seen it. They have been executing their duties in a...professional way.'