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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Sept 2 (AFP) - Two weeks before the deadline by which it is supposed to have finally disarmed, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) makes no secret of its aim to survive as a military force. The question is what kind of force?
Under the June 21 agreement that kicked off the process of the KLA's demilitarisation, the international community promised to consider "the formation of an Army in Kosovo on the lines of the US National Guard...as part of a political process."
For the KLA, this is tantamount to an admission that it will transform itself into the province's official army.
The KLA's political chief Hashim Thaci, who supports full independence for the province, said this week that he was "certain Kosovo would be equipped with a proper defence force." The questions were over its "name, its structure and its weapons."
In America, the National Guard is a reserve force made up of volunteers. It can be mobilised to cope with natural disasters, or on missions of vital national security, such as resisting invasion.
But for the international community, the June agreement provides no guarantee that the KLA will be allowed to become a kind of National Guard, only that this will be given "due consideration".
For the moment, KFOR, the Kosovo peacekeeping force, insists, it remains the only legitimate military force in Kosovo, and in any case by Sept 19 the KLA is supposed to have incapacitated itself by handing in the last of its weaponry, including automatic small arms.
Under the disarmament schedule agreed with KFOR's British commander Lieutenant-General Michael Jackson immediately after the Serb withdrawal from Kosovo, the KLA had ninety days in which to deposit its arms at designated sites, in three distinct phases.
KFOR has been officially optimistic about the process. At the end of the second phase in mid-August, Jackson affirmed that the KLA "are indeed compliant with their undertaking" signed on June 21.
"I am content with the demilitarisation and I wish now to focus on the transformation aspect" of the undertaking which aims to turn the KLA into a non-military body, he said.
Estimates for the size of the KLA at the time of the NATO bombardments vary between 10,000 and 30,000. The June 21 agreement calls for them to de-mobilise, with some being integrated into a new Kosovo police force.
The KLA also says it is complying with the disarmament process, but many KFOR personnel are privately dubious about what percentage of weaponry has actually been handed in.
Like much of the rest of former Yugoslavia, Kosovo is awash with weapons, and hiding them would not be difficult. In July, German KFOR troops discovered a stockpile of several tonnes of heavy weapons that the KLA had "forgotten" to tell KFOR about.
According to the KLA's military chief, Agim Ceku, the KLA needs to remain an effective "defence structure", to prepare for the day "when KFOR and the UN will leave".
But for the international community, that prospect risks entrenching still further the ethnic Albanian hold on the province, which has now been all but emptied of its Serb population.