Kfor commander warns of Albanian KPC running wild
A British general in Kosovo has warned that the Albanian-run Kosovo Protection Corps could run wild it looses trust in the international presence.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Tuesday, February 12, 2008
"If we lost their trust they would have every opportunity to go off and do things we would not want them to," said Maj Gen Martin Rutledge, the KPC's co-ordinator.
"They certainly know where the weapons are and how to get weapons so it is very important to dissolve them with dignity, " the general said.
The KPC high command could unleash a torrent of ethnic cleansing that would probably see most of the remaining 100,000 Serbs driven out from the population of two million Albanians, the Daily Telegraph reports.
"In this environment it only needs few people to do something inappropriate," Maj Gen Rutledge said.
For the past nine years, the military ambitions of the former Kosovo Liberation Army's leaders have been curtailed by absorbing its commanders into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) - a civil defence force which acts as a fire service and is partly armed. It also includes 15 generals and 40 colonels out of a force of 3,000. The force is to halve in size after independence, the Daily Telegraph writes.
General Rutledge says that the stakes will be "quite high" in the coming weeks and months.
"If my office got it wrong we could significantly destabilise events that are going to unfold in the next few months," he said.
