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BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Sept. 8 (UPI) The Yugoslav general who headed the Pristina Corps of President Slobodan Milosevic's Serb-led forces is threatening to repossess the southern Serbian province by force if the United Nations does not stick to its commitments.
General Vladimir Lazarevic said in today's edition of the Belgrade newspaper Nedeljni Telegraf that "the refusal of the international community to implement the agreements made on Kosovo implies that we must recover by force the territory which they have turned into an occupied zone."
"If the United Nations does not observe the agreements and its own decisions, then the state has the right and obligation to defend its territory and people. It must be hammered home to everyone that if we are forced to it, we are ready," Gen. Lazarevic declared.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and deputy Russian foreign minister Alexander Avdeyev in talks in Belgrade Tuesday both condemned what they said were actions by international forces violating U.N. Security Council resolution 1244 on Kosovo and called for the preservation of Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The Yugoslav government sees the decisions of the U.N. administrator in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, to form a customs service and introduce the German mark as legal tender in Kosovo, as well as his support for the setting up of a Kosovo police corps as threats to the country's sovereignty over the southern Serbian province provided for in the U.N. resolution.
Belgrade is also irritated by the delay in allowing a Yugoslav army and police contingent to return to Kosovo under a provision of the resolution to help protect the Serbian population there from attacks by revenge-seeking ethnic Albanians.