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MOSCOW - Russia's permanent representative to the United Nations said on Thursday he would be visiting Yugoslavia from Nov. 5 to 10 to see at first hand why the U.N. Security Council's Resolution 1244 on Kosovo-Metohija was not being implemented.
Sergei Lavrov said he would be informing the chiefs of the U.N. mission to that U.N.-administered province of the Yugoslav republic of Serbia about the concern this state of affairs was causing in Russia.
Lavrov told Itar-TASS news agency that other members of the Security Council, too, had serious questions to ask of the chief of the U.N. civilian mission (UNMIK) to Kosovo-Metohija, Bernard Kouchner.
Many of Kouchner's practical steps were viewed as ignoring the provisions of Resolution 1244 which envisaged for strict respect for Yugoslavia's sovereignty and territorial integrity, Lavrov said.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has summoned Kouchner to New York for Friday, Nov. 5, to explain his actions to the Security Council.
"We insisted that the Kosovo force (KFOR) should not absolve itself of the responsibility for security in the territory, that they should give more attention to guarding outer frontiers of the province which are now quite transparent and through which, to this day, in violation of all resolutions of the U.N. Security Council, weapons are being supplied to extremists and there are various other prohibited deliveries, including drugs trafficking," Lavrov said.
Meanwhile, the matter of returning the Yugoslav army and police to the province, which had been agreed upon in the Security Council, was not being settled, he added.