The US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, warned Kosovar Albanians in Pristina yesterday that the international community will turn its back on them if ethnic violence continues to rage in their province.
Ms Albright was visiting Kosovo ahead of the Balkan Stability Pact conference in Sarajevo, which is due to get down to business today. "You will not have the support of the world if you are intolerant and take the law into your own hands," she told a crowd of around 10,000 ethnic Albanians. Her words came one day after Serbs in the village of Gracko, just south of Pristina, buried 14 of their relatives who were killed last Friday in a massacre by unidentified assailants. Ms Albright described it as a "cowardly murder" and said the Kosovar Albanians must prove they will not repress Kosovo Serbs as they had been repressed by the Serb military.
Since the entry of Kfor peacekeepers on June 12th, there have been around 200 murders, with the victims evenly distributed between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
When Ms Albright's motorcade passed through the nearby village of Granica later, a small group of Serbs spat on the cars, and chanted "Slobo" in support of the Yugoslav President and indicted war criminal, Mr Slobodan Milosevic.
Three of the five men arrested in connection with the Gracko massacre have been jailed while more evidence is sought.
Meanwhile, the Finnish President, Mr Martti Ahtisaari, who co-brokered the Kosovo peace deal, warned regional leaders at the start of the Sarajevo Stability Pact conference that the EU would only offer full membership to states promoting regional security, democracy and human rights. Other EU leaders, including the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, were flying into Sarajevo last night.
A US solider was killed in Kosovo on Wednesday, in circumstances that remained unclear, the Pentagon said yesterday.
The death of Igor Katz of Florida was "not the result of enemy fire," said Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, who said an investigation was under way to determine whether the death was a suicide or accidental.