Serbia: U.N. supports Kosovo Albanians
Mar. 24, 2006 at 12:45PM
A Serbian government official has accused the U.N. civilian mission in Kosovo
of supporting ethnic Albanian separatists in the southern Serbian province.
Sanda Raskovic-Ivic, president of the Serbian
government coordinating committee for Kosovo, in a letter to Soren
Jessen-Petersen, the chief of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, charged that
Jessen-Petersen was one of the "most influential promoters of the goals of
Albanian separatists."
Raskovic-Ivic's letter
was in reaction to Jessen-Petersen's call that Western countries ignore Serbia's
arrest warrant on Agim Ceku, Kosovo's prime minister, for alleged war crimes in
Kosovo in 1999.
In March 1999, the U.S.
led-NATO forces bombarded Serbia and Montenegro, at the time ruled by the
Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, to prevent what it described as a
humanitarian catastrophe of ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo because of abuses by
Serbian military and police forces.
After
three months of air attacks, NATO troops entered Kosovo in June 1999 and the
United Nations set up its administration in the province where there are
1,800,000 ethnic Albanians and 200,000 Serbs.
