False alarm in Kosovo - old cemetery found, not mass grave, UN say

Jul 11, 2007, 15:15 GMT

Pristina - The UN administration in Kosovo Wednesday said that a recently discovered site with human remains was a neglected graveyard, not a mass grave from the 1999 war in the province.

The location 60 kilometres west of Pristina was investigated after a shepherd stumbled upon human bones in early July. Forensic experts exhumed the remains and ruled that they were not victims of violence.

'The bones of at least four individuals were found,' UN Mission in Kosovo spokesman Alexander Ivanko said. After 'a thorough assessment,' it had been established that 'the remains did not belong to the victims of the conflict,' he said.

'The remains were traditionally buried, without clothing, in an old cemetery. The remains were most likely of Albanians buried in that old cemetery. So, it has nothing to do with the conflict', he told a press conference in Pristina.

The area in the Klina municipality had been populated by both the majority Albanians and Serbs during the war and was the scene of fighting between Serb forces and Albanian rebels.

The discovery of the human remains caused a stir in Kosovo as some 100 people from the area of Klina, mostly Albanians, remain missing from the time of the conflict.

More than 2,000 people from Kosovo - 70 per cent of them Albanian, the rest mostly Serb - are still unaccounted for today, seven years since NATO ended the war by bombing Serbia into forcing the pullout of its troops from Kosovo.

The largest mass grave in Kosovo, with more than 100 victims, was found in 1999 in Istok, 70 kilometres east of Pristina.

Three mass graves were also found in Serbia proper, with the remains of some 1,000 Albanians killed in Kosovo and transported for a secret burial in an effort to hide traces of the atrocity.

Several high-ranking politicians, police and army officials, including the late Serbian leader Slobodan MIlosevic, were indicted by a UN war crimes tribunal over the organized killing and persecution of Kosovo Albanians in 1999.