Former Serb policemen are working as security guards for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Kosovo, despite the role played by police in the ethnic cleansing of nearly one million Albanians.
An investigation by The Irish Times has found evidence that two OSCE staff members who worked with the mission earlier this year prior to NATO air strikes swapped their OSCE badges for police uniforms, only to resume work with the mission after the end of the bombing.
This is despite the UN resolution which brought the OSCE and other institutions into the province, which demands: "With drawls from Kosovo of all military, police and paramilitary forces according to a rapid timescale."
Serb police were the linchpin in the ethnic cleansing of the spring which saw an estimated 10,000 Albanian civilians slaughtered, thousands of homes put to the torch and more than 900,000 people forced to flee the province.
These officers were hired without being checked by the OSCE, which as well as supervising elections in the battered province is responsible for monitoring human rights and war crimes allegations.
The Irish Times has found witnesses to testify that two officers, Mr Milos Novakovic and Mr Slobodan Dermanovic, were seen in police uniforms during the NATO bombing campaign in Pristina.
Neighbours around Mr Nova kovic's apartment, in the Bregui Diellit district, said that during his days working for the OSCE in the winter he would come onto the balcony of his fourth floor apartment and fire bursts of machine gun fire into the air.
"He was very fond of his gun. He would go out on the balcony in the night and fire away," said a tenant in the same block.
In his now empty apartment two full magazines from a Kalashnikov machine gun lie with a hand grenade, a metal police badge, a combat jacket and pair of boots.
Witnesses in another district, Dardanija, say Mr Dermanovic spent his war years in police uniform and carrying a Kalashnikov gun around the streets.
This has not stopped the OSCE re-employing him as a driver.
There is no evidence that either of these men participated in atrocities during the fighting, but Albanians say they are intimidated by their presence.
Another former driver was known under the previous mission for breaking the rules and wandering around the building with a pistol jammed into his trouser belt. He is now employed as a security guard.
Last night the OSCE press officer, Ms Urdur Gunnarsdottir, at first said there was no bar on police officers: "Not all MUP [Ministry of Interior] policemen were criminals."
One hour later she said: "We are now going over to a new policy. There are two cases who are being investigated. I cannot elaborate on the names you gave me. Everybody will be checked, also the cleaning ladies. It's pretty difficult for a person in a MUP uniform to pass a test."
She said that from now on, no local staff will work with the OSCE if they were either Serb police or guerrillas with the Kosovo Liberation Army. "If you were a MUP two months ago its bloody difficult to say you were not involved in anti-Albanian behaviour."
The former police officers were kept in work despite complaints by ethnic Albanian staff members.
They said they feel intimidated. "We don't feel safe with these guys around, these are the same police who attacked us," said one staff member.
One Western supervisor told one of his Albanian employees that the need to hire Serbs overrode any vetting procedure: "I told him a lot of things but he said it's an order from Kiri [Mr Kiri Vanhaven, a Finnish senior administrator] to employ Serbs."
This is in contrast to NATO. At its headquarters, two blocks from the OSCE, spokesman Maj Jan Joosten said all local employees were first checked with a NATO intelligence unit, which has compiled a database of suspected police and ethnic Albanian guerrillas, none of whom are hired.
Maj Joosten said NATO did not share this intelligence with the OSCE.
The OSCE was unable to say why it did not perform similar checks, though Albanian staff say the personnel office is under pressure to ensure the mission hires Serbs as well as Albanians.
This has proved difficult because the majority of Serbs have left Kosovo, which has a 90 per cent Albanian majority. Figures this week show that 39 Serbs and other minorities have been hired, compared to 76 ethnic Albanians.
This has led to some comic situations in the front office with Albanian visitors refusing to speak Serb to the guards, and the guards in turn unable to understand their Albanian.
Italian troops with the Kfor force have found a total of 748 bodies to date in their sector in western Kosovo, a officer reported yesterday.
Brig Gen Mauro Del Vecchio told a press conference here that Italian units had learned of 43 alleged mass graves in their sector, 31 of which had been confirmed.
He gave total figures of ethnic Albanians refugees returning to Kosovo at 606,000 already in the province, with another 365,000 expected.
Some 150,000 ethnic Serbs had left Kosovo, he said, while about 50,000 remained.
He confirmed that to date only five corpses have been found near Lubjenic, south-west of Pec, in a region where local residents had earlier said up to 350 people had died.
Del Vecchio said people from Decane had told Italian troops that some 350 people had been killed trying to cross mountains between Kosovo and Montenegro.
But it was not sure if they were all together or in smaller pockets, the general added.
He said he had gone personally to check on the report, but had only found five corpses.