KLA Rebel Leaders Agree to Demilitarization

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia —  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. The former rebels are now civilians, and up to 5,000 of them will become members of a lightly armed civilian defense force, said Maj. Ole Irgens, a spokesman for the 19-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In a nod to the rebel leaders’ objections to the original Kosovo Corps name, the new organization will be called the Kosovo Protection Corps, or KPC. And KLA Gen. Agim Ceku was named its provisional head.

But NATO held firm against KLA demands that the corps be larger and more heavily armed.

Two hundred members of the force will be authorized to carry weapons to provide security for KPC operations. The organization will answer to United Nations civil administrators, while its day-to-day operations will be coordinated by NATO peacekeepers, Irgens said.

And former fighters--including high-level zone commanders--must apply for membership.

“No one has a free ticket into the Kosovo Protection Corps,” Irgens said. “Everyone has to be screened.”

However, given the commanders’ experience during the war against Yugoslav army, paramilitary and security police forces, most will probably find a place, Irgens said.

“It’s natural to think that they could be appointed leading positions,” he said.

In a related move, former rebel leader Hashim Thaci, who serves as prime minister in the ethnic Albanians’ unrecognized provisional government, announced earlier Monday the formation of a political party that is to grow out of the KLA.

The party, which so far is not named, will seek to unify political factions among ethnic Albanians and focus on building a multiethnic, democratic and independent Kosovo, he said. Kosovo is still a province of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia.

Thaci could not be reached immediately for comment on the agreement. He was a key figure in the last-minute wrangling that delayed formal demilitarization scheduled for midnight Sunday.

The KLA already had surrendered more than 10,000 weapons, and those soldiers who had not reentered civilian life were gathered in NATO-controlled “assembly” areas.

Irgens said those fighters will be issued new transitional uniforms while the Kosovo Protection Corps is organized, another nod to KLA complaints that its soldiers did not want to be out of uniform while waiting for their new role to be determined.