Kosovo

UNMIK police announced today that four more ethnic Albanians have been arrested for the March 23rd murders of a Ghanaian police officer and his Kosovo Albanian partner. The suspects were captured in the town of Kosovo Polje yesterday, following a police chase in which one suspect was wounded. With the latest arrests, a total of seven suspects are in custody for the killings. All the detainees are Kosovo Albanians, among them a former Kosovo Police member who quit last year.

The two slain officers were ambushed while conducting routine work near the town of Podujevo, near Pristina. The gunmen fled the scene by seizing two passing cars after the police returned fire and reinforcements rushed to the area to give chase. One suspect was hit by police fire. The body of a man with fatal gunshot wounds and two Kalashnikovs were found later during a search in a nearby village.

"Let the death of these police officers be a wake-up call for people everywhere in Kosovo," UNMIK Police Commissioner Stefan Feller said after the incident. "Each one of us must play a part in rooting out violence by identifying the perpetrators to the police and helping to bring them to justice." Voicing shock and outrage, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned the killings, saying the shooting of the two officers was "inexcusable" and that the current violence and instability in Kosovo cannot be tolerated.

UNMIK police spokesman Neeraj Singh said that the killings occurred six days after the worst outbreak of ethnic violence in Kosovo since 1999. Nineteen people were killed and 3,600 Serbs were driven from their homes during two days of clashes. During a press briefing yesterday, Singh said that around 180 people had been arrested thus far for crimes related to the riots. "All these persons have been interviewed and are being investigated for a broad range of offenses including murder and attempted murder, disturbance of peace and public order, arson, theft from abandoned Serb houses, attempted theft, looting, hooliganism and causing general danger." Seeking to quell the violence as quickly as possible, NATO rushed in 2,000 troops from Bosnia and Herzegovina, some of whom are expected to be sent back shortly as the situation has since improved. Serbia-Montenegro Defence Minister Boris Tadic said during a trip to Romania today that his country's possible accession to NATO's Partnership for Peace program could help to stabilize the situation in Kosovo. He added, "NATO is the key military alliance without which the Kosovo problem cannot be solved."

Note: Kofi Annan and Stefan Feller are outraged by the murder of two UN employees, but lack the courage and integrity to place the blame for the current violence and instability in Kosovo publicly on the Moslem Albanians. Neither they nor NATO have done much to prevent the ethnic cleansing of Christian Serbs from a province that under international law belongs to them. The 2000 soldiers from Bosnia-Herzegovina will soon be sent back there, but most of the Serbs expelled by the Moslems from Kosovo - with tacit NATO approval - will probably not return. They will be afraid to do so, knowing that justice and protection is the last thing they can expect from NATO. The U.S. and the E.U. have virtually detached Kosovo from Serbia and "repatriated" all the Albanians (including the murderous bandits of the Kosovo Liberation Army) expelled by Serbs when the Americans bombed them. Both received Moslem thanks on September 11th 2001 and on March 11th 2004, but seemingly this is not enough to make them see the light.