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KOSOVSKA MITROVICA - Nikola Kabasic of the Serb National Council said Monday that 25 Serbs and other non- Albanians had been abducted and another 15 killed in Kosovska Mitrovica in the five months since the U.N. civilian mission (UNMIK) had been deployed to Kosovo and Metohija.
Kabasic, head of the council's committee on human rights protection, made the statement in talks with E.U. officials who have arrived in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia's province to check a report on the functioning of the provincial district attorney's office, sumbitted by UNMIK on September 1.
Abductions and killings occur only in the southern, ethnic Albanian-populated section of Kosovska Mitrovica, located in the north of the province, and the nearby villages of Svinjare, Gojbulja and Novo Selo where scores of Serb families have for days been under siege by ethnic Albanians.
Of the 35 inmates in the prison in Kosovska Mitrovica, 29 are Serbs.
The council described the work by the district attorney's office as bad, because of its incompetence, bias against and discriminatory attitude towards the non-Albanian population.
The office includes five ethnic Albanian judges, because two Serb judges and their Moslem colleague resigned from office in protest against the office's decisions.
Kabasic and other council officials informed the E.U. delegation that, from the very outset, the district attorney's office had been engaged allegedly on discovering Serb crimes, ignoring crimes that had really occurred, specifically those against Serbs.
They called on the European Union to use its influence to ensure a just ethnic ratio in the district attorney's office as well as the enforcement of Serbia's and Yugoslavia's laws in the town.
They also urged that UNMIK, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe set up an independent commission that would investigate all current legal cases.