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ROME, Aug 14 (Reuters) - Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said in an interview published on Saturday that the tables had turned in Kosovo and Serbs there were now facing as ``brutal and repugnant'' repression as that of Albanians in the past.
``The Serb population is suffering a repression that is much smaller but just as brutal and repugnant as that suffered previously by Albanians,'' Dini told la Repubblica newspaper.
He quoted the U.N.'s refugee agency, UNHCR, as saying that Serbs remain at home, terrorised, cut off from aid supplies and that Albanians were forcing them to sign over their property before forcing them out of the southern Serbian province.
Dini said international peacekeepers should do more. ``KFOR needs to be more vigorous. The violence against Serbs must be prevented.''
Dini warned the Kosovo Liberation Army on Thursday that unless it cooperated with international authorities, they would have to rethink giving the province reconstruction aid.
The top U.S. officer in Kosovo's peacekeeping force, Brigadier General John Craddock, has said rogue elements with unclear links to the KLA and disaffected former KLA members have been factors in armed violence.
Well over half 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.
The KLA has agreed to disarm and disband by mid-September but proliferating discoveries of arms caches and increasing ethnic Albanian clashes with KFOR peacekeepers have caused concern among the international community.