Report: Minority Serbs now victim of hate crimes in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia - International officials censured Kosovo's ethnic Albanians on Friday for becoming the oppressors of their former Serb tormentors and using the same ''disgusting tactics'' that were once used against them.

In a series of reports released Friday, the United Nations and other international organizations involved in rebuilding Kosovo condemned growing ant-Serb violence, saying Albanian revenge attacks remain a worry a year after NATO drove Serb forces out of the province.

In a report issued on the eve of the first anniversary of the U.N. mission in Kosovo, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan warned that continued international involvement in Kosovo depended on the cooperation of all sides to bring peace and security to the province.

''An upsurge of vicious attacks on Kosovo Serbs in several areas has undermined Serb confidence in the future,'' Annan said. ''The international community did not intervene in Kosovo to make it a haven for revenge and crime.''

But the chief U.N. administrator in Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, urged critics Friday not to judge the pace of reconciliation, saying it would take years for Serbs and ethnic Albanians to live together peacefully.

''The history of the Balkans involves centuries and centuries of difficulties,'' he told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York. ''We will need ... 10 years of a United Nations presence there ... to see change in people's minds.''

Kouchner spoke after briefing the Security Council on the accomplishments and shortcomings of the United Nations' adminstration in Kosovo, which was launched on June 10, 1999 at the end of NATO's bombing campaign on Yugoslavia.

The 78-day NATO campaign brought a halt to a yearlong crackdown on the majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by Serb-led Yugoslav forces. NATO-led peacekeepers and U.N. administrators moved in once Serb troops left.

Another report, jointly drawn up by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and released in Pristina, listed a total of 180 violent crimes committed against Serbs - now only around 5 percent of Kosovo's population - between February and May.

In comparison, ethnic Albanians - who make up more than 90 percent of the province's population - were targeted 215 times, it said.

UNHCR also condemned the mounting violence from its Geneva headquarters, calling it the ''glaring failure'' of a year of attempts to build peace in the province.

''We knew when we went back that the hatred ran deep but we did not believe that the refugees and victims that UNHCR had helped in exile would soon become the oppressors,'' said spokesman Ron Redmond. ''That means also employing many of the same disgusting tactics that were used against them.''

Tens of thousands of Serbs have fled Kosovo since NATO bombing stopped June 9, 1999. They were victims of - or feared - violence from ethnic Albanians seeking revenge for the estimated 10,000 ethnic Albanians killed by the Serb-led forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Instead of abating, such violence has picked up in recent weeks, leaving several Serbs dead and the rest of the minority enraged. Serbs rioted in Gracanica on Tuesday hours after a grenade attack.

''These attacks appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign,'' Annan wrote in his report.

Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov went further, accusing the U.N. mission of failing to prevent the ''upsurge in anti-Serb terrorism,'' which he said was a ''planned, provocative campaign,'' by ethnic Albanians.

In Pristina on Friday, more than 1,000 ethnic Albanians gathered to demand the release of those still held in Serbian jails or information about others who went missing in the Serb crackdown that ended after the 78-day air campaign.

Sixteen ethnic Albanians were released from Serb prisons later Friday.