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UNITED NATIONS, Oct 4 - Yugoslavia complained to the United Nations on Monday that the decision to open the airport in the Kosovo capital Pristina violated Yugoslav civil air traffic security.
In a letter to the president of the Security Council circulated here, Yugoslav U.N. envoy Vladislav Jovanovic expressed concern at this "new unilateral and arbitrary decision" and called for it to be revoked.
Stressing that Kosovo was an "autonomous province of the Yugoslav constituent Republic of Serbia," he said that, under the rules of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Yugoslavia "has the sole responsibility and rights in its undivided airspace."
Yugoslavia accordingly expected that the U.N. Interim Administration in Kosovo's (UNMIK) decision to open the airport "will be revoked and that the question of the opening of Pristina airport for commercial flights be resolved in cooperation with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" on the basis of the rules and regulations of the ICAO convention, of which Yugoslavia is a signatory.
In another letter, Jovanovic protested that a mortar attack on a market in the town of Kosovo Polje on September 28 which killed two Serb civilians and wounded 42 was "a terrorist act which exposes the charade" behind the U.N. decision "to 'demilitarize' and 'transform,' the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) into the Kosovo Protection Corps."
The KLA, a guerrilla force that battled Yugoslav troops and police for Kosovo's independence, signed an agreement with the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) last month turning the former rebel group into a civilian body responsible for dealing with disasters and other emergencies.
Jovanovic said the Security Council should immediately annul the decision establishing the Kosovo Protection Corps and immediately disband "that mono-ethnic organization which threatens the multi-ethnic and multi-religious character" of Kosovo.