Former KLA member to head NATO-trained “Kosovo Security Force”
Kosovo Albanian authorities have named Fehmi Mujota, a former member of the separatist guerilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), as “defense” minister and head of the future Kosovo Security Force, a lightly-armed formation to be trained by NATO.
(KosovoCompromise Staff) Tuesday, August 05, 2008
The KSF - envisaged by the Ahtisaari plan -- will have 2,500 active members and 800 reservists, and plans for its creation have caused a stir not only in Belgrade and Moscow, but also among NATO countries such as Spain, which are refusing to take part since they consider it an implicit recognition of Pristina'a sovereignty.
Mujota was elected as a close ally of Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaqi.
Virtually unknown during the conflict in the late 90s, his name became controversial during the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.
In fact, according to a witness of the prosecution Shukri Buja, also a member of the KLA, Mujota was in charge of accompanying the controversial head of the OSCE mission, retired US general William Walker, into the village of Racak, a scene of an operation of the Serbian police against the KLA in January 1999 in which dozens of KLA fighters, but also several Albanian civilians, were killed.
Walker's qualification of the action as "crime against humanity" led to the NATO bombing of Serbia two months later.
Belgrade has always rejected this claim, saying it was a legitimate action against the KLA stronghold.
