Kosovo officials arrested after huge weapons haul Thu Dec 21, 2006 6:35 AM EST160
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By Fatos Bytyci
PRISTINA, Serbia (Reuters) - Two officials of Kosovo's governing coalition have
been arrested after police found a minibus packed with heavy weapons and
ammunition.
A police source said the haul included a 12.7 mm anti-aircraft gun and more
than 100 rocket-propelled grenades.
Local media reports said the find, made late on Wednesday in the Drenica region
of central Kosovo, was the largest in Kosovo since the 1998-99 war and the
deployment of NATO peacekeepers.
Three men were arrested, including a senior adviser to the Kosovo labor
minister and a member of the governing Alliance for the Future of Kosovo (AAK),
which emerged from the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army.
The find sharpened fears of unrest in the U.N.-run province, where major powers
have delayed a decision on the demand of 2 million ethnic Albanians for
independence from Serbia.
The Kosovo government issued a statement expressing regret for what it said was
an isolated case. The AAK, a junior member of the governing coalition, said it
was "surprised" that two of its members were involved.
The breakaway province, run by the United Nations since 1999 and patrolled by
17,000 NATO-led peacekeepers, is braced for possible violence after the major
Western powers and Russia let slip a year-end deadline to decide its fate until
Serbia holds a general election on January 21.
An influential Brussels-based think-tank on Wednesday warned against further
delay.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) said the temptation to avoid a tough
decision on independence must be avoided, or there could be a "major new
crisis."
Some Kosovo Albanian leaders have warned of unrest, which would almost
certainly target the remaining 100,000 Serbs. Groups of armed men have appeared
over the past year, and rioters last month lobbed stones and bottles at the
U.N. headquarters in the capital, Pristina.
NATO bombed Serbia for 78 days in 1999 to force out Serb forces accused of
causing a bloodbath in a two-year conflict with separatist guerrillas. Ten
thousand Albanian civilians died and almost a million were expelled.
Diplomats say the United States and its major European allies favor a form of
independence supervised by the European Union. But Russian support for Serbia,
which opposes independence, is hardening and could scupper efforts to solve the
problem in the U.N. Security Council.
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