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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Aug 11 (AFP) - "Thugs" have rid the Kosovo capital of Pristina of virtually all its Serbian minority, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said Wednesday in its strongest condemnation yet of the reverse ethnic cleansing that has hit the province.
"UNHCR views with increasing alarm the situation of the remaining Serb minority in the city," agency spokesman Ron Redmond told journalists here.
He added that there were now only an estimated 1,000-2,000 Serbs left in Pristina.
That compares with an estimated population of around 40,000 before the NATO-Yugoslavia conflict, according to Serbian media, he said, and 27,000 according to a 1991 census.
A spokesman for KFOR, Major Jan Joosten, said suggestions that the Kosovo peacekeeping force was failing in its mission to protect the Serbs were unfair.
The soldiers were working "damn long hours" to offer security to Kosovo's minorities, he said, but added: "We can't be on every corner, in every house."
Nadia Younes, the spokeswoman for the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) tasked with the interim administration of the province, told questioning journalists: "We're as angry as you are."
The Serb exodus, she said, "is not a reality that UNMIK is willing to accept or going to accept."
Redmond said that the Serbs remaining in Pristina are "the most vulnerable of the pre-conflict population -- they're elderly, they're disabled and a lot of them are isolated," Redmond said.
It was unlikely they were involved in the persecution of ethnic Albanians, "but that doesn't seem to matter to the thugs who are now terrorising them," he said.
"Disgusting" tactics including intimidation, forced expulsions from apartments, beatings and murders have created an unbearable atmosphere for the Serbs, forcing them to live in constant fear, he said.
Redmond said the campaign against the Serbs was in many cases "systematic" -- forced expulsions for instance followed a pattern and threatening letters were worded almost identically -- but he refused to directly accuse any group.
However, KFOR peacekeepers and some UN officials here privately say they suspect the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), or renegade groups of the ethnic Albanian separatist movement, is behind the violence against Serb civilians.