Kosovo Liberation Army

Her body savaged, her family wronged and her future ruined, 13-year-old Pranvera Lokaj has taken off for the mountains of Kosovo to seek the only solace her hidebound clan accords a rape victim: to kill or be killed in pursuit of vengeance. "I have given her to the KLA so she can do to the Serbs what they have done to us," Haxhi Lokaj said of his daughter, who has been sent to fight with the rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Europe's top human rights watchdog is launching an investigation into a bone-chilling allegation: that ethnic Albanian guerrillas may have kidnapped Serb civilians at the end of Kosovo's 1998-99 war, removed their organs and sold the body parts on the black market. A United Nations inquiry into the issue in 2004 proved inconclusive. So did a recent investigation by the Associated Press, which obtained U.N. and Serbian documents detailing what was uncovered at a farmhouse in remote north-central Albania: bloodstains, syringes, empty bottles of muscle relaxant, surgical gear and other material.

Can the talks in Rambouillet, France, on Kosovo succeed? The bloody conflict of the past year has made the situation appear hopeless. The warring parties' demands--the Kosovar Albanians want independence and the Serbs want continuing sovereignty--appear irreconcilable. The U.S. and Europe have decided to freeze these contradictory demands by imposing a three-year international protectorate over a self-governing Kosovo that would remain within Yugoslavia.

Fatmir Limaj, a senior officer of the Kosovo Albanian rebels, was acquitted Wednesday of charges of torturing and murdering ethnic Serbian and ethnic Albanian civilians at a prison camp during the 1998-99 war. A second defendant, Isak Musliu, also was acquitted, but a third, Haradin Balaj, was sentenced to 13 years in prison for executing nine prisoners in the woods in July 1998. All three had pleaded innocent on all charges at the U.N.'s Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.

The future role of the Kosovo Liberation Army has become the blind spot in the Kosovo peace plan. NATO is attempting to shed light on the issue by meeting with KLA leaders to discuss "demilitarization," but the ensuing debate has become more pedantic than practical. Under the current plan, NATO will still leave hundreds of thousands of small arms--assault rifles, handguns and grenades--in the hands of the KLA. The term "demilitarization" has gradually replaced "disarmament," both in the U.N.

Two Serbian villages in the U.S.-controlled eastern part of Kosovo were attacked, leaving two people dead, peacekeepers said. A woman and a man were killed and four others injured Tuesday in Donja Budriga. Villagers blamed the attack on the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. A day later, the nearby village of Ranilug also came under attack. International officials fear that attempts to destabilize the province will increase as the Sept. 19 deadline for the KLA to disarm nears.

U.N. prosecutors in The Hague opened a war crimes case against three members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the first ethnic Albanians to face the tribunal for actions during the 1998-99 war in Serbia's southern republic. Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Balaj and Isak Musliu are accused of murdering, torturing and imprisoning Serb civilians and perceived Albanian collaborators during the conflict. All have pleaded not guilty.

Kosovo's main ethnic Albanian parties overcame differences and pledged to share power, breaking a three-month stalemate. The top candidate for president, Ibrahim Rugova, of the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo, won general elections in November. But his party failed to win enough votes to govern alone, and Rugova refused to form a coalition. Under the deal, Rugova will become president.

Serbian forces battled Monday to regain control of a Kosovo mining village captured by ethnic Albanian separatists, forcing thousands of villagers to flee into the woods under a hail of shells. More than 8,000 people left their homes in the southern town of Belacevac and a neighboring village. The Serbs were trying to retake the Belacevac open-pit mine, which fell to the Kosovo Liberation Army last week.

A Gypsy woman was shot and killed by men in Kosovo Liberation Army uniforms in the southern Kosovo town of Suva Reka, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said. Ethnic Albanians accuse Gypsies of siding with Serbs in Kosovo, the Yugoslav province where Serbian forces carried out an "ethnic cleansing" campaign that sparked NATO's 11-week air war. The shooting of the 65-year-old woman occurred late Wednesday, NATO officials said in Pristina, the provincial capital.

U.N. prosecutors in The Hague opened a war crimes case against three members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the first ethnic Albanians to face the tribunal for actions during the 1998-99 war in Serbia's southern republic. Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Balaj and Isak Musliu are accused of murdering, torturing and imprisoning Serb civilians and perceived Albanian collaborators during the conflict. All have pleaded not guilty.

Kosovo's main ethnic Albanian parties overcame differences and pledged to share power, breaking a three-month stalemate. The top candidate for president, Ibrahim Rugova, of the moderate Democratic League of Kosovo, won general elections in November. But his party failed to win enough votes to govern alone, and Rugova refused to form a coalition. Under the deal, Rugova will become president.

First came the groan of armored vehicles and the roar of combat helicopters descending from the night sky. Before Xhejlane Shabiu was fully awake, dozens of battle-ready troops had burst into her house, swearing and gesturing with their weapons for her startled family to line up against the wall. "They just kept screaming at us, and the children began crying," the 36-year-old Kosovo Albanian recalls of the incident in May, when she was four months pregnant.

NATO's intervention to end the brutal repression of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo has failed to stop a vicious cycle of violence in which even children are taking part, human rights investigators reported Monday in the most detailed look yet at Kosovo's war. Ethnic Albanian children as young as 10 are being used by adults to carry out attacks on Serbs and other minorities, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said in two lengthy reports.

Leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army formally demilitarized Monday, capping two days of last-minute wrangling over the rebel soldiers' role in a planned civilian defense force. An agreement reached after U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, commander of NATO forces in Europe, arrived from Brussels on Monday to join the negotiations largely reflects the alliance's initial plans.

Last-minute disputes Sunday over the peacetime role of former rebel fighters led NATO to agree today to a delay of two days in the planned demilitarization of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA, which was to have formally disbanded at midnight Sunday, won the reprieve as its leaders negotiated with NATO-led international peacekeepers over the nature of the KLA's proposed successor, the civilian defense Kosovo Corps.

This is a time of blunder and bluster for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Tuesday he declared a six-day Orthodox Easter cease-fire in the war with NATO forces. He said all military action against the Kosovo Liberation Army in the rebellious southern province also will be suspended. How many KLA fighters can still be active after the brutal Serbian sweeps of Kosovo province in recent weeks? The U.N.

It is truly sad to read over and over again that the people returning to Kosovo and the Serbs are talking about "revenge." What is it with these people? Haven't they had enough of killing and destroying their own land? Sometimes I think we should keep our hands out of these problems and let them come to a conclusion themselves. Even if it means that they are continuing killing each other off for revenge. Where is their common sense? ANNELIESE OHLER North Hollywood What shall we call the expulsion of Serb people from Kosovo since "ethnic cleansing" is already taken?

Tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians took to the streets of this provincial capital Saturday, converting a planned public thank-you to the Kosovo Liberation Army into what participants described as an impromptu independence celebration. Cars loaded with young men and women waving KLA flags veered through streets choked with pedestrians, many also carrying flags or signs hailing the guerrilla fighters and promising a free Kosovo.

When war ended in his homeland three months ago, rebel Kosovo Liberation Army fighter Ali Mustafa made a unilateral decision to disarm. He went home. "I decided to come back to my normal life," Mustafa said this week during a break from his job at the combination sawmill and garage that he and his four brothers run here in the provincial capital of Kosovo. "My brothers are carpenters, and they couldn't work without me."