NATO in danger of being taken hostage by terrorism in Kosovo, top Serb warns

A top Serbian official accused the UN and the NATO-led force running Kosovo of becoming "hostages of Albanian extremism and terrorism" and urged them to take decisive measures to establish a multiethnic society in the province.

Otherwise, the international community "will be responsible before history for a resurrection of fascism in one part of Europe and creation of a monstrous mono-ethnic Albanian para-state on the territory that is legally recognized as part of Serbia," Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Nebojsa Covic warned the UN Security Council.

At an open council meeting, Covic, the top Serbian official dealing with Kosovo, denounced the "hideous murder" of two Serb youths and the wounding of four others, saying the attack was part of an escalation of intimidation and persecution of the remaining Serbs in Kosovo.

The attack was the worst this year against Kosovo's beleaguered Serb minority, which has been targeted by ethnic Albanian revenge attacks since the UN took control of the province following a NATO military intervention in 1999. Since then, two-thirds of the 300,000 Serbs living in Kosovo have left.

Serbian officials blame the recent wave of violence on ethnic Albanian extremists pushing for Kosovo's independence.

Kosovo's UN administration has not said whether the shooting was ethnically motivated.

Covic accused the UN administration, the 17,000-strong NATO-led force, and the 4,000 UN police personnel in Kosovo of doing "less than they could have" to protect Serbs and punish the Albanian extremists.

He said he could understand "the inertia of the representatives of the international community ... but I cannot acquit it."

"The staff of the United Nations civil mission and all officers and personnel of the international troops in Kosovo ... have become hostages of Albanian extremism and terrorism," Covic charged.

Covic also demanded a reorganization of Kosovo's security forces "to address the problem of Albanian terrorist groups supported by organized crime in a more efficient way" and more aggressive investigations and prosecutions of ethnically motivated crimes.

Recently, he called the Albanian National Army a "scam" and claimed the actions it takes responsibility for are carried out by the Kosovo Protection Corps -- the UN-backed, lightly armed civilian emergency unit that includes former rebels that fought Serb troops during the 1998-99 ethnic Albanian insurgency.

In his speech to the Security Council, Covic called for the Albanian National Army to be placed on the international list of terrorist organizations and urged an investigation of the Kosovo Protection Corps "leading to its abolishment."

Council members responded to his speech with condemnation for the attacks on the Serb youths and calls for greater efforts to build a multiethnic Kosovo.

But Britain's UN Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry rejected Covic's accusation of "inertia" in the international community as "unfounded and unfair."