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VIENNA - Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) political leader Hashim Thaqi said in an interview on Friday that the organisation would establish a defence force in the Yugoslav province, now ruled by an interim U.N. administration.
He told Austria's Die Presse newspaper that the KLA, an ethnic Albanian group which fought a 16-month guerrilla campaign against Serb rule in Kosovo, would be split into three parts.
The group signed a formal agreement with NATO in June under which its fighters were supposed to give up most of their main weapons within 90 days.
"We will form a political party, KLA members will take part in a new police force and we will have a military formation, a defence force, in Kosovo," the newspaper quoted him as saying.
"We need a defence force in Kosovo. Kosovo cannot do without such a force, even if political conditions were to change in Serbia. The state of Kosovo has a territory and a people who will decide what Kosovo is."
When the interviewer noted that the U.N. resolution setting up the interim administration made no mention of an armed force for the ethnic Albanians, Thaqi replied:
"Political developments in Kosovo are a process. The Kosovo question is in our view an open question and it has not yet been decided."