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THE commander of the Kosovo Protection Force, set up last month to help police the war-torn province, could be indicted for war crimes allegedly committed during the ethnic cleansing of Serbs by Croatian soldiers more than four years ago.
United Nations and western sources in Kosovo confirmed last week that Agim Ceku, 38 - a former brigadier in the Croatian army who emerged as commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) last summer - is under investigation by the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague.
The court's inquiries are believed to relate to atrocities committed in Krajina, a Serb-populated region of Croatia, between 1993 and 1995.
Ceku's record in Kosovo itself is not thought to be in question, although the office of Carla del Ponte, the new chief prosecutor, said an investigation into his activities with the KLA could not be ruled out.
"I cannot comment of course on any investigation but it has occurred to me that here is an individual who could come under double scrutiny from the tribunal, and that is probably unique," said Paul Risley, del Ponte's spokesman.
Ceku officially remained in the Croatian army, in which he has been decorated, until the beginning of this year. As an ethnic Albanian, he has long had links to the KLA, however.
Last month he was appointed head of the Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK), a lightly armed civilian force of 5,000 members created from the KLA, with the blessing of the Lieutenant-General Sir Mike Jackson, the senior Nato commander in the province, who stepped down last week.
The possibility that Ceku, a respected figure in Kosovo, could be accused of war crimes, has sent shivers through the international community in Kosovo, which is struggling to persuade the Serbian minority that the corps is not just the KLA in a new guise. "If we lose him it will be a disaster," said a diplomat close to Bernard Kouchner, the UN's special representative. "When you get to the second level of the TMK, you're down to a bunch of local thugs."
Sources familiar with the investigation into Ceku said the most serious crimes with which he had been linked were committed in the so-called Medak pocket of Krajina in 1993. Ceku was commanding the fledgling Croatian army's 9th Brigade, based in Gospic, a town seething with hatred between Croats and Serbs. Boosted by notorious mercenaries, the brigade was feared as one of the most ruthless in an area where Croatian nationalism was combined with the thuggish corruption of a mafia underworld.
Ceku is suspected of involvement in the organisation of an assault on three villages - Medak, Citluk and Pocitelj - in September 1993, that left them almost completely destroyed.
Bojan Munjin, of the Croatian Helsinki committee, a human rights group in Zagreb, said that officially at least 50 Serbs, many of them elderly, went missing. A Serbian source familiar with the area claimed hundreds were massacred.
Ceku went on to become a brigadier in the Croatian army and was one of the commanders trained by American forces before the infamous Operation Storm of August 1995, which pushed most of Croatia's rebellious Serbs from Krajina and into Serbia proper.
About 300,000 Serbs were "cleansed" during the operation, which effectively ended the expansionist ambitions of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president. Until this year's Kosovo conflict, it was the greatest military reverse he had suffered. Hundreds of Serbs are still missing and sources in the Hague say at least half a dozen Croatian commanders are being investigated.
Born in 1960 in Pec, in western Kosovo, Ceku joined the old Yugoslav National Army as a teenager, doing so well that - almost uniquely for an ethnic Albanian - he was admitted to the military academy. During his subsequent career in the Croatian armed forces he has been awarded medals five times by President Franjo Tudjman.
American diplomats, who have been the most supportive of the creation of the TMK, have suggested any indictment of Ceku would most likely be "sealed" and thereby kept out of the public domain.
However, Serbian sources said an indictment of Ceku would "help send the right signals" to Belgrade, where the Hague tribunal is denounced as a political court biased against the Serbs. So far there have been no indictments for crimes committed in Croatia, although 15 Croats are languishing in the Hague for alleged misdeeds in Bosnia.
Ceku, who rarely gives interviews, is understood to be delighted with his new job, but a potential indictment could make him think again; he has three children and a house in Croatia, where Tudjman's government has a record of non-compliance with the Hague almost as bad as Serbia's.
"There's speculation as to whether he's going to stick around or not," said David Slinn, the senior British diplomat in Kosovo. Another diplomat said he believed Kfor, the Nato-led peacekeeping force, could not contemplate a public relations disaster with the Albanians by arresting Ceku.
Pieces of an American F-117 Stealth bomber shot down by the Serbs last March will go on show in the Yugoslav Aeronautical Museum next month. Also on display will be parts of a Nato F16 fighter, and chunks of bombs, missiles and a pilotless drone aircraft.