Former PM surrenders to war crimes tribunal

Kosovo’s former prime minister has surrendered to the UN war crimes tribunal a day after the ethnic Albanian resigned to face charges stemming from the province’s fight for independence from Belgrade.

Ramush Haradinaj, 36, arrived at the UN detention unit under police escort on Wednesday after travelling to The Hague on a special flight from Pristina. He will face charges of atrocities committed during the 1998-99 war between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serb forces.

Tribunal spokesman Jim Landale confirmed Haradinaj was in UN custody, but declined to give details of his arrival. The defendant is expected to appear in court in the next few days, when he will be asked to plead to the charges in his indictment.

Neither Haradinaj, a former commander of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army, nor court officials gave any details of the specific charges against him.

Serbian officials accuse him of command responsibility in the alleged killing of Serb civilians by the rebel KLA forces in 1998 close to his home village of Glodjanje.

They also spoke of the rape of several Roma women and the killing of some Roma men – all part of a wedding party – by his forces shortly after the war near the town of Djakovica.

Lahi Brahimaj, another suspect named in the indictment, travelled to the court with Haradinaj.

Brahimaj was a former rebel and a member of the Kosovo Protection Corps, a civilian emergency group made up of ethnic Albanian former rebels. A third former rebel, Idriz Balaj, was also indicted by the court and surrendered later Wednesday, Landale said.

International officials praised Haradinaj – a seasoned battlefield commander with a fiery temper and a loyal following – for his decision to cooperate with the court and called on other countries in the region to follow his example.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed Haradinaj’s ”good example of cooperation” with the tribunal, UN associate spokeswoman Marie Okabe said in New York. Annan also praised the “peaceful, democratic manner” in which Kosovo responded to his departure, she said.

The secretary-general urged Kosovo to build on the achievements of Haradinaj’s government and continue to make progress on UN standards that must be met before talks on resolving Kosovo’s status can begin, Okabe said.

“It is essential that we all remain focused on the work at hand so that we can move forward in building a stable, multiethnic and democratic Kosovo,” she said.

Kosovo still seethes with ethnic tensions nearly six years after the end of the war between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, and the decision to charge Haradinaj raised concerns of renewed violence.

While the ethnic Albanian majority considers Haradinaj a hero in the struggle for independence from Serb rule, most of the Serb minority hate him and other former KLA leaders.

Haradinaj, who resigned on Tuesday, said his decision to face justice was a sacrifice he had to make for the sake of Kosovo’s future.

“Today I have been called upon to make a sacrifice, something I never believed would happen,” he said in a statement. “This means also cooperation with international justice, however unjust it is.”

Proclaiming his innocence, Haradinaj said his actions as an ethnic Albanian rebel commander during the war against Serb forces were consistent with international law.

“I have behaved like an honourable man,” he said.

Kosovo officially remains a province of Serbia-Montenegro. Its majority ethnic Albanian population wants independence, whereas the Serb minority insists the province should remain part of Serbia.