NATO Removing Kosovo Arms Cache

   By Fisnik Abrashi
   Associated Press Writer
   Saturday, June 17, 2000; 3:08 PM

   KLECKA, Yugoslavia -- NATO-led peacekeepers started removing ordnance
   Saturday from the biggest illegal weapons cache uncovered in Kosovo
   since the end of fighting last year - arms a British commander said
   were "almost certainly" hidden by ethnic Albanian extremists.

   "I think that this is a very significant find," Brig. Gen. Richard
   Shireff, commander of British forces in Kosovo, said of the stacks of
   grenades, machine guns and other weapons. "It is almost certainly,
   almost entirely Albanian. All evidence we got here suggests that it is
   former KLA material."

   KLA is an acronym for the Kosovo Liberation Army, a group of ethnic
   Albanian separatists who fought a Serb crackdown in this province. The
   leadership of the now formally disbanded KLA must have known about the
   weapon cache, and not divulging it as part of Kosovo's peace
   settlement reflects a "degree of noncompliance," Shireff said.

   NATO officers said the weapons and ammunition were found Friday in
   this former KLA stronghold 20 miles southwest of Pristina.

   Two underground bunkers were stacked to the ceilings with grenades,
   mortars, ammunition, heavy machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and
   other ordnance. Shireff said it appeared that some weapons had been
   recently removed. Other storage areas were found Saturday but it was
   unclear what they contained.

   Diplomats speaking on condition of anonymity said that Agim Ceku, the
   former military chief of the KLA, met Saturday with senior
   representatives of Kosovo's Western diplomatic community. The arms
   find apparently was at the center of discussion.

   Ceku now heads the Kosovo Protection Corps. The corps is officially a
   civil emergency response unit, but the Serbs say it actually is the
   successor to the KLA, which fought them in Kosovo until NATO forced an
   end to the bloodshed a year ago.

   In September, NATO-led peacekeepers declared that the KLA had complied
   with orders to turn over all its weapons. On Sept. 20, NATO agreed to
   reorganize the KLA into the protection force under a deal personally
   negotiated by NATO's supreme commander for Europe, Gen. Wesley Clark.

   British Lt. Col. David Allfrey, who commanded the search operation,
   suggested some of the missing weapons could have been used in recent
   attacks against Serb civilians. Serb community leaders believe such
   attacks are part of a campaign by ethnic Albanians to drive them from
   the province.

   "What their designs are, it's not my position to say," Allfrey said.
   "But there have been a few killings in the Serb community in the last
   couple of weeks."

   The cache was discovered as part of an exhaustive search for weapons.
   The search, which began Thursday, involved hundreds of peacekeepers
   and covered more than 38 square miles of central Kosovo.

   A military training area was near the bunkers, which appeared to be
   well-kept. There were fresh footprints, according to NATO personnel on
   the scene.

   "It's clearly been used for training. There is a very large quantity
   of ammunition," Allfrey said. NATO officers suggested that they
   expected to find even more arms, saying there appeared to be tunnels
   leading to other depots nearby.

                        (c) 2000 The Associated Press