Peacekeeping troops have arrested five Yugoslav army soldiers found inside Kosovo, a spokesman for international forces in the Serbian province said yesterday. The spokesman, Maj Jan Joosten, said the soldiers had been detained on Thursday in eastern Kosovo, close to the border with the rest of Serbia. They said they had been patrolling the border, Maj Joosten told reporters in Pristina.
Maj Joosten also said Dutch peacekeepers had arrested six Serbs, suspected of being former members of the Yugoslav police, in the southern town of Orahovac and confiscated weapons.
Under an agreement that ended NATO bombing of Yugoslavia last month, no Yugoslav military, paramilitary or police forces are allowed inside Kosovo or within a 5 km zone next to the province.
A spokesman for the Kfor peacekeeping force in Kosovo said it was still awaiting an explanation from Belgrade as to why the soldiers were on territory it controls.
"They are still in detention. They are still being questioned. No decision has been taken on when they will be released," the spokesman said.
Maj Joosten said Kfor had sent a letter to Belgrade demanding to know why the five soldiers had been found inside the province.
"An explanation is being sought from the VJ [Yugoslav Army] as a matter of urgency," Maj Joosten said. He said the group, armed and uniformed, had been detained near the village of Novakoka Cuka - in the United States sector - at around midday on Thursday.
"There was no problem. They handed in their weapons, there was no struggle," he said.
Maj Joosten said it was quite possible the soldiers had strayed into Kosovo inadvertently. "If you look at the maps they have, it's easy to do," he said, adding that Kfor was, however, awaiting an official explanation from Belgrade.
Maj Joosten, a Dutch officer, said the soldiers had been carrying AK-47 rifles and two-way radios. He said there was no indication they were members of any special force.
"We're talking about five soldiers, normal soldiers and one corporal first-class," he said.
US military officials have said they are investigating reports that some Serb military or paramilitary units may still be active in Kosovo, in defiance of the agreement with NATO.
In the incident at Orahovac on Thursday, Dutch troops moved into a building after receiving intelligence information that radio messages were being transmitted from it, Maj Joosten said. He declined to go into detail about the messages but said the Dutch had confiscated weapons and computer equipment.
The six may have been members of the Yugoslav Interior Ministry's special police force, the MUP, Maj Joosten said.
"There is a suspicion that they were ex-MUP," he said, adding that the six had not resisted arrest.
Maj Joosten said Kfor's latest arrests, which also included looters and ethnic Albanian guerrillas who had not yet moved to assembly points to begin disarming, showed the international force was determined to uphold law and order.
Kosovo has been the scene of widespread looting and arson attacks over the past few weeks, as ethnic Albanians take advantage of the vacuum left behind by the withdrawal of Serb forces to exact revenge for Serb violence. The UN interim administrator for Kosovo said in Pristina yesterday he wanted Kosovo Serbs and ethnic Albanians to form a council to take political decisions and try to quell the high level of violence in the province.
"[The situation] has stabilised at a fairly high level of insecurity in certain parts of Kosovo and this cannot be allowed to persist," the UN Special Representative, Mr Sergio Vieira de Mello, said. Mr Vieira de Mello spoke just before meeting Serb and ethnic Albanian leaders in Kosovo.
The UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan, picked the French junior Health Minister, Mr Bernard Kouchner, as the UN administrator for Kosovo, the UN spokesman, Mr Fred Eckhard, announced. Mr Kouchner (59) is the founder of Medecins sans Frontieres.