Officials deny problems exist with cooperation between KFOR, U.N.
By Gregory Piatt,
Kosovo bureau
PRISTINA, Kosovo — There have been no problems between United
Nations police and peacekeepers while investigating a bus bombing earlier this year, a
police spokesman for the U.N. Mission in Kosovo said Monday.
“We’re very satisfied with our cooperation with KFOR,”
said Derek Chappell, the chief of press and public information for U.N. police, about a
bus bombing that killed 11 Serbs in February.
“We were satisfied with the cooperation at the scene, in the
investigation and in the arrests,” Chappell said at a press conference on Monday.
The Washington Post reported this week that U.N. police sources said
KFOR has hampered the investigation by not revealing all it knows about the bombing or the
bombers. The article quoted sources saying KFOR’s intelligence didn’t want to
compromise its informants.
U.N. sources told the Post that KFOR hasn’t cooperated with
bringing criminals to justice because it fears that it might provoke ethnic Albanian
militants into attacking 36,000 peacekeeping troops in the province, including 5,600
Americans.
Chappell said he was at the scene right after the bus carrying Serbs
from Yugoslavia to cemeteries in Kosovo was bombed. He said police were then working with
KFOR on the scene.
KFOR spokesman, Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Roy Brown, denied the
charges in the Post story.
Brown confirmed that the story’s details leading up to when the
bus was bombed are correct, including the mix-up of releasing the convoy of five buses
from the Serbian city of Nis before the road was thoroughly checked for explosives.
Brown said it was unfortunate that the bombing’s main suspect
escaped by cutting the fence at the detention area at Camp Bondsteel in May. But the
Americans have done a thorough investigation of the escape Florim Ejupi, Brown said.
“Action has been taken to deal with the problem,” Brown
said about the improvements to the fences at the detention center, along with more guard
towers and lights.
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