Prime minister resigns over war crimes charges

KOSOVO’S ethnic Albanian prime minister resigned yesterday after being charged with war crimes by the United Nations tribunal.

Rumours that Ramush Haradinaj was about to be charged by Hague chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte had circulated since before he became prime minister last December, raising fears of violence if NATO peacekeepers were forced to arrest him.

“Yes, the prime minister has been informed he has an indictment,” said a senior official in the Kosovo government. “We have to face it. “He has informed the president (Ibrahim Rugova). He will resign today ... and will fly to the Hague tomorrow.”

A year ago, mobs of ethnic Albanians attacked Serb enclaves in the United Nations-run province in two days of rioting which left 19 people dead and hundreds of homes in ashes.

Mr Haradinaj had made clear he would not defy the tribunal. But peacekeepers were taking no chances. Germany flew in extra soldiers to bolster its peacekeeping contingent in the NATO-led KFOR mission, and Britain deployed an extra 500 troops on Monday after an urgent request from NATO, a KFOR spokesman said. The force numbers nearly 20,000.

The United Nations mission in Kosovo, UNMIK, on Monday raised its security threat assessment to “black” in western Kosovo, ordering non-essential staff to stay off the streets. Details of the indictment against Mr Haradinaj have not been made public. The UN court has investigated him over his role in the 1998-’99 guerrilla war against Serb forces and the alleged murder of Kosovo Serb civilians and Albanian “collaborators”.

Mr Haradinaj, 36, spent much of the 1990s as an economic migrant in France, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland, drifting between jobs as a construction worker and bouncer. He returned to Kosovo in early 1998 to command the western wing of the Kosovo Liberation Army.