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NEW YORK - Russia's and China's U.N. officials insisted in Security Council consultations on Secretary-General Kofi Annan's latest report on the U.N. mission to Kosovo and Metohija that Security Council Resolution 1244 be consistently implemented.
Ambassadors Sergei Lavrov and Shen Guafang pointed to deviations in the implementation to date of the document, stressing that a decision on the disbanding of the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) must be fully implemented.
Lavrov criticised the 'transformation' of KLA, which is the term used in referring to the forming of the so-called 'Kosovo protection corps,' saying that this was a big mistake because KLA must be disbanded and fully disarmed, as provided for by the resolution.
He blasted also other unacceptable moves by the U.N. civilian mission to the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's Kosovo and Metohija province (UNMIK), specifically putting a foreign currency into circulation, attempts to privatise Yugoslavia's state and public property and plans on issuing illegal identification papers.
He said that such moves were impermissible, underlining repeatedly that UNMIK can take no measures contrary to or violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia and that Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Yugoslavia.
Lavrov voiced concern about Yugoslavia's Kosovo and Metohija border being unprotected, saying that there were quite a number of indications that KLA had not been fully disarmed.
Shen, whose criticism was much in the same vein, reiterated that the principle of Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected.
Hedi Anabi, Annan's assistant, tried to respond to objections by Russia and China, both permanent Security Council members, as well as by a number of other Security Council members.
He tried to persuade them that the so-called 'Kosovo protection corps' was an exclusively civilian structure that constituted no basis for an army of ethnic Albanian extremists and separatists.
Backing Anabi's stand, the United States' U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke said that the 'corps' was the most acceptable way of including the ethnic Albanian extremists in Kosovo and Metohija's political life. He said that the United States did not want KLA to be transformed into an army.