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PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (September 9, 1999 3:36 p.m. EDT ) - Former ethnic Albanian rebels will wear uniforms and serve under "military structures" in a new organization to replace the Kosovo Liberation Army, a NATO official said Thursday. Russia, however, called the plan for a restructured KLA "unacceptable."
The government plans to make its objections clear when the head of the U.N. mission, Bernard Kouchner, and U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen visit Moscow next week, the ITAR-Tass news agency said.
With the Sept. 19 deadline for the demilitarization of the KLA approaching, some senior figures in the group are said to be reluctant to accept any plan that spells the end of their army, which rose up against the Serbs in late 1997.
Russia and some Western European governments, however, are concerned about letting the KLA play a major security role - especially in view of the continuing attacks by ethnic Albanians against Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities.
Reinforcing those concerns, NATO announced Thursday that eight KLA members were arrested late Wednesday in the western city of Djakovica. The rebels had a machine gun, cluster bombs, and other weapons that were supposed to have been turned in to NATO authorities under a phased disarmament plan signed in June.
In the southwestern town of Suva Reka, NATO said a Gypsy, or Roma, woman died Thursday after being shot by men in KLA uniforms. Ethnic Albanians accuse Gypsies of siding with the Serbs.
Nevertheless, the NATO command, with the support of the United States, has been negotiating details of the new "Kosovo Corps."
NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Robin Clifford said that although the corps would be a civil organization, it "will have military structures, which means they will be uniformed public services." He said the corps' duties have yet to be discussed.
In Moscow, however, Russia was pushing for the complete disarming and disbanding of the former rebel army, ITAR-Tass said.
A leading Serbian opposition group, the Serbian Democratic Party, also condemned the plan, saying it would violate the Kosovo peace agreement.
Also Thursday, a spokesman for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic said Yugoslavia will not intervene in Kosovo while the U.N. peace mandate is in effect.
Ivica Dacic's pledge backed away from recent statements by other Milosevic associates, who had threatened to send troops to Kosovo to stop anti-Serb violence. Dacic denied that would happen under the current arrangement, but hinted that it was a possibility once peacekeepers were gone.
"I thing that they will leave sooner and later and we can hardly wait for the moment," Dacic said. "Our struggle for Kosovo continues and if anybody thinks we have given up on it, is terribly wrong."
Most of Kosovo's more than 200,000 Serbs have fled the province since NATO and Russian peacekeepers entered on June 12. Those who remain complain that the 40,000 NATO-led troops are protecting only the ethnic Albanians.