Large weapons cache seized in Kosovo

29/04/2008

Kosovo authorities announced on Monday the seizure of a cache of weapons and ammunition near their country's border with Macedonia, where they also arrested four suspected arms-smugglers.

(AP, DPA, Balkan Insight, B92 - 28/04/08; Balkan Insight - 21/04/08; B92 - 20/04/08; Javno - 19/04/08)

The weapons apparently were intended for extremists in neighbouring Macedonia, police said. [Getty Images]

The Kosovo Police Service (KPS) said on Monday (April 28th) that it arrested four people after stopping a car carrying weapons near the Kosovo-Macedonian border.

"We suspect that the weapons and ammunition were meant for the Macedonian market," KPS spokesman Veton Elshani told the DPA.

The arsenal seized in a village near the town of Gnjilane on Sunday night reportedly included rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds, anti-aircraft machine guns and ammunition of different calibres. Police delivered the seized munitions to the NATO-led force operating in this part of Kosovo.

Police believe the intended recipients were ethnic Albanian extremists in Macedonia. The country endured a seven-month inter-ethnic conflict in 2001.

The seizure came about a week after Kosovo media carried reports and photos of masked gunmen circulating in the villages of Debelde and Mjak near the Macedonian border. The stories, quoting nearby Kosovo Albanian villagers as vowing to "take up arms to defend their farms" if needed, prompted a KPS investigation.

"If we meet them, we will arrest them," Elshani said last week. "They certainly have no license to carry those weapons."

KFOR also pledged action against gunmen in the border zone.

"We are patrolling this area," Belgrade-based B92 quoted a spokesman of the NATO-led peacekeeping force as saying. He added, "As soon as we come across this group, we will react, in co-operation with UNMIK and KPS."

The villages where witnesses reportedly spotted the gunmen are in an area given to Macedonia under a February 2001 border agreement between Skopje and Belgrade. The deal followed, by 20 months, the end of Kosovo's 1998-1999 armed conflict with Serbia.

Angry Kosovo Albanians in the region bordering Macedonia claim that the 2001 pact gave "2,500 hectares of Kosovo's land" to the country's southern neighbour.

Kosovo leaders also contest the legality of the deal, arguing that Serbia at the time had no right to transfer any portion of the land to Macedonia.

On February 17th, the Kosovo Assembly adopted a unilateral declaration of independence, which more than 30 states recognised, including the majority of the EU's 27 members.

Working groups recently established by Pristina and Skopje are seeking a solution to the border dispute.

A joint Kosovo-Macedonian commission agreed earlier this month to have negotiators demark the 125km border in line with former UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plans. Their agreement called for completion of the process within the next 12 months.

Macedonia's ethnic Albanians, who account for more than a quarter of the country's population, are pushing for Skopje's immediate recognition of Kosovo's independence. An AP report noted on Monday, however, that Macedonian leaders link any such decision to the countries' ongoing border dispute.