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MOSCOW, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Russia called on Friday for the swift demilitarisation of the Kosovo Liberation Army after Moscow said that Albanian gunmen had shot at its peacekeepers in Yugoslavia's Kosovo region.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the gunmen had shot at Russian peacekeepers when they were evacuating priests from an Orthodox Christian monastery to a hospital in Kosovo. No one was killed, it said.
``This incident is yet more evidence that the process of demilitarisation of the military formation, the KLA, and other armed groups of Kosovo Albanians...is going on extremely slowly,'' the ministry said.
``The Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation is forced to state again that the swiftest and fullest-scale deployment of the U.N. mission and international forces in Kosovo should have normalised the situation...this is what Russia is trying to achieve.''
The KLA has agreed to give up its weapons gradually as part of a peace deal for the region and NATO-led KFOR officials have said that the army is demilitarising according to schedule.
Russia has in the past described the KLA as a terrorist organisation. KLA leaders say Russia is not neutral enough to police the province.
Russian peacekeepers face general hostility across Kosovo from ethnic Albanians, who distrust Moscow's close ties with Serbia and recall that Moscow opposed NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia which drove Serb forces from the region.
Ethnic Albanians guarded roadblocks around the Kosovo town of Orahovac on Friday to keep out Russian peacekeeping troops for a fifth day running.
Russia has deployed about 3,600 peacekeepers in Kosovo, where they operate as part of KFOR in sectors controlled by NATO states, but not directly under the military alliance's command.