Serbian Coordination Centre head links shadowy body to Kosovo Protection Corps

Serbian Coordination Centre head links shadowy body to Kosovo Protection Corps
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - April 19, 2005, Tuesday

Excerpt from report by Belgrade-based private BKTV on 18 April

[Presenter] Kosovo police have no new information about the strong explosion which took place in central Pristina last night [17 April]. They could not say whether the target of the attack was [the owner of the Koha Ditore group] Veton Surroi's [ORA] party headquarters.

[Passage omitted] This explosion was only one in a series of attacks perpetrated, both [Kosovo] Albanian opposition parties and experts say, by the shadowy Homeland Security [Albanian: Sigurimi i Atdheut] organization.

This is a tightly organized group, linked with both crime and the authorities whose aim is an independent Kosovo, Coordination Centre [for Kosovo-Metohija] chairman Nebojsa Covic said in an interview with BK television.

[Interviewer] Some Albanian opposition parties submitted a report to UNMIK [UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo] in which, among other things, they speak about the phantom Homeland Security organization. They still have no information about this, and even Surroi's party claims that [Kosovo President Ibrahim] Rugova is behind it. What kind of information do you have?

[Covic] Well, my information is completely identical to yours. The PDK [Democratic Party of Kosovo], I think this is the name of [Hashim] Thaci's party, submitted a large body of material with full and clear attachments, which completely documents huge crimes taking place in Kosovo-Metohija, as well as links between crime and the government. The month of December is mentioned with over 100m euros' worth of fraud. I hope that we will soon be in possession of this material.

What is incredible is the extent to which UNMIK is failing to respond to all this. You can see what happens: settling of scores has begun between their [Kosovo Albanian] parties. The murder of [former Kosovo prime minister Ramush] Haradinaj's brother. Yesterday, there was a huge explosion in Pristina, which was an attack against Surroi's party headquarters. So this is a culmination of crime, but it is obvious that this involves a very strong organization which is linked, through one of its wings, with military structures, and this military part presents itself as some kind of civilian protection corps. This is the famous Kosovo Protection Corps [KZK; TMK in Albanian], the full structure of which we have. I mean, they have units, they have brigades! They even have names for them. They have something like three hundred and something [brigades], I'm not sure how many, they have two hundred and something brigades. This is a rather robust formation.

Their ultimate goal is an independent Kosovo, and establishing full control over Kosovo-Metohija. It is not the first time - [changes thought] you know, almost every state has a mafia. But it will not be the first time in recent times that a mafia gets its own state. So this is the goal in Kosovo-Metohija. The overture has been completed in full to a large extent, and guess what: who must raise their voice? Who must oppose this? Well, Belgrade, of course. What will be the price? Well, they will probably start attacking us. They will probably begin with compromising stories. Squabbles will probably start. Who will they choose? Well, they will pick our fellow-citizens to do this. We have seen those methods already. [Paragraph as heard]

However, what I am very concerned about is this very organized attack, a deliberate attack against all our institutions. This is the attack against the [Serbia-Montenegro] army through reforms and in the forms of reforms. Do not get me wrong: I am not an opponent of reforms. I am for a modern, well-organized and trained army which we need. But we cannot have our combat readiness dropping, while the combat readiness of the Kosovo Protection Corps increases.

We have another institution under attack, which is the Serbian Orthodox Church [SPC], which is literally under siege from all sorts of directions. Huge attacks are staged against the [SPC] Raska-Prizren Eparchy. Of course, I expect that we as a state will find the strength to put up a good defence.

This is why I am a pessimist because I do not see that some people who should understand this do understand it in such a way. We even have our former [Serbia-Montenegro] foreign minister [Goran Svilanovic] coming out in public with such free, quote, expert opinion [on Kosovo's independence in four stages, made on behalf of the Brussels-based International Commission on the Balkans], unquote, which is not correct in the least. Let me not use some other term.

I think that some people in Belgrade and in our institutions are beginning to treat Kosovo-Metohija as a problem which is in some sort of way superfluous. They do not realize that the whole blouse - if Serbia is a knitted blouse - will begin to rip apart along its seams after Kosovo-Metohija is possibly ripped out of it.

SOURCE: BKTV, Belgrade, in Serbian 16:55 GMT, 18 Apr 05