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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP)Two weeks before the Kosovo Liberation Army is to demilitarize, international officials and leaders of the former rebel army have agreed on the broad outlines of an armed force to replace it.
But the plan could derail at the United Nations, where the Russians and others object to giving such a prominent role to the former guerrillas, in part because of fears for the safety of non-Albanian minorities.
And there are concerns that KLA commanders are looking to use a small, approved security force as the basis for an army for the independent state they seek.
Details of the future ethnic Albanian force are still under negotiation, but the major elements have been agreed upon by the NATO commander in Kosovo, Lt. Gen. Mike Jackson, and the KLA military chief, Agim Ceku, said officials in the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping mission, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The force would be called the ''Kosovo Corps'' and would include a helicopter unit as well as an honor guard, security force and a small rapid reaction unit. The officials said the corps would number 3,000 and would be allowed to carry weapons.
Washington has tried to put a favorable spin on the plan, downplaying any suggestion that allowing the KLA to continue under a different name would go against the demilitarization agreement signed by NATO and rebel leader Hashim Thaci in June.
The agreement provides a deadline of Sept. 19 for the KLA to ''demilitarize'' and disband as a military organization.
On Sunday, Sen. Joe Biden, a senior Democrat who visited Kosovo last week, described the Kosovo Corps as a ''face-saving device'' creation of a service for former KLA soldiers under international control that will deal with civil emergencies.
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell said the solution should eliminate KLA concerns about having to completely disband. ''They need to have some kind of security force,'' McConnell said. ''We can help train that force and should do that.''
The Russians don't see it that way. As a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, Russia could block U.N. approval of any formula that went beyond the terms of the resolution establishing the peacekeeping mission.
''We understand the demilitarization in the full sense of that word,'' Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandar Avdeyev said in Belgrade. ''That is not only the confiscation of armaments but also the disbandment of KLA structures. Russia feels negative about all the variants providing for preservation of 'the army' as an organized structure and 'softening' of clauses of the U.N. Security Council resolution'' that established the peacekeeping mission.
Avdeyev said Moscow would express those concerns to the head of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, when he visits Russia later this month.
Even Yugoslav opposition figureson whom the West has pinned hopes for a new, democratic government in Belgrade to replace President Slobodan Milosevicstrongly oppose a role for the KLA.
Speaking to reporters today in Bucharest, Romania, Serb opposition leader Zoran Djindjic said giving any new security role to the KLA, regardless of its new name, would ''be dangerous for the whole region.''
''The international community cannot transform the terrorist groups into a regular army,'' Djindjic said.
Yet the ethnic Albanians see the corps as the first step toward a Kosovo army. Such an army, they believe, would prevent the Yugoslavs from regaining control of Kosovo.
Neither the United States nor its peacekeeping partners support an independent Kosovo and officially consider the province a part of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.
''We are preparing this Kosovo Corps to be a Kosovo Army, so when (the peacekeeping force) leaves, they can become the Kosovo Army, no matter the state of Kosovo,'' Naim Maloku, a security adviser to Thaci, told The Associated Press. He insisted, however, the corps would cooperate with NATO.
NATO officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, admit they wonder whether the KLA leadershipwhich has repeatedly affirmed its commitment to the demilitarization agreementis saying one thing to alliance negotiators and another to its commanders in the field.
Twice in the last weeks, Ceku has left talks with international officials visiting Kosovo, including U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and told reporters that ethnic Albanians will get their Kosovo army, although NATO sources insist they will not and that the issue was not under discussion.
Ibish Mazreku, deputy commander of an elite KLA unit known as the Delta Force that operates near the Albanian border, had no doubts.
''From the beginning, it will be the Kosovo Army not a national guard because that would be accepting that we are part of Serbia,'' Mazreku told The Associated Press.