U.S.: We will not tolerate ANA’s threats

"We are, by no means, willing to tolerate those threats... From any side," a State Department official told KosovoCompromise.com. "What we want to see is peaceful environment for negotiators to come up with a sustainable solution".

AKSh's alleged spokesman and a leader of the group's political fraction called Front for the Albanian National Unification (FBKSh) Gafur Adili warned that his group is prepared fight off any threats of alleged Serbian armed groups.

Adili's threats followed a rather aggressive media offensive launched by the AKSh ahead of decisive stage of negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina, scheduled to finish by December 10, when Contact Group's mediators will present their findings to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

AKSh, which was declared a terrorist organization by the United Nations Mission in  Kosovo (UNMIK) back in 2003 after a failed bomb attack on a railway in northern Kosovo, advocates the unification of all Albanian-dominated regions in Balkans into single state, including Albania proper, Kosovo, southern Serbia, western Macedonia , as well as parts of Greece and Montenegro.

The shadowy group, which had claimed the responsibility for several deadly hit-and-run attacks in Macedonia and southern Serbia in past years, claims to have some 12,000 fighters on all major strategic positions in Kosovo, but NATO-led peacekeepers were so far unable to determine their strength or, even, its whereabouts.

However, several members of this loosely organized paramilitary formation were killed in a November 7 shootout between Macedonian security forces and Albanian outlaws in the western part of the country, including two alleged radical islamists - Ramadan Shiti and Metin Islami a.k.a "Commander Talibani". The leader of a group, Lirim Jakupi, known by his nom-de-guerre "Commander Nazi" escaped the police manhunt.

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