Shadowy Albanian rebels appear at Kosovo funeral

PRISTINA, Serbia and Montenegro, April 13 (Reuters) - A shadowy rebel group appeared at a funeral in U.N.-run Kosovo vowing to stop the "occupation" of the province and to fight for unified Albanian lands, local media reported on Tuesday.

Three men wearing balaclavas and insignia of the Albanian National Army (ANA) showed up during the re-burial on Monday of two ethnic Albanian guerrillas who died fighting Serb forces five years ago, several dailies said.

Their surprise appearance in the western village of Bainca may worry international officials, coming a few weeks after the province exploded in violence the West blamed on Albanian extremists bent on driving out minority Serbs.

NATO's commander for southeastern Europe, U.S. Admiral Gregory Johnson, said it could be seen as intimidation and "it cannot be taken lightly."

He told reporters after meeting Kosovo Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi that they had talked about "appropriate action to be taken".

ANA has in the past claimed responsibility in statements on its Web site for several attacks in the volatile Balkans. One was an attempt to blow up a Kosovo railway one year ago.

The funeral was believed to be the first time uniformed members of the group, branded a terrorist organisation by Kosovo's U.N.-led administration last year, were seen in public.

"We swear on the graves of national martyrs that we will not stop on our path towards national liberation and unification," a man in uniform told a crowd of several hundred people."We came here to warn collaborators with old and new occupiers."

The group advocates a Greater Albania including Albania proper, Kosovo, and parts of western Macedonia, southern Serbia and Montenegro -- an idea rejected by the West and Albania.

Some diplomats have dismissed the group as little more than an "Internet army" or a band of criminals. "They are too small and unlikely to get much support," said one Western official.

Kosovo became a de facto international protectorate after NATO's 1999 bombing campaign to halt Serbian suppression of the the province's independence-seeking Albanian majority.

In the worst outbreak of violence since the United Nations and NATO established control, Albanian mobs in mid-March attacked Serb villages and churches in two days of violence that killed 19 people and injured hundreds from both communities.

Oops! Sorry it wasn't the ANA but the NLA. From an article posted on Freerepublic in January 2002:

"Last Summer, rumors of an unstated connection between NATO and the NLA persisted in Macedonia. Two occasions in particular drew attention. First, the Battle of Aracinovo, in which German and Macedonian sources alleged that 17 "advisors" from MPRI took part on the Albanian side; Macedonian security sources claim that three Americans were among those killed. Second, was a mysterious airdrop by a US helicopter over the NLA stronghold of Sipkovice, filmed by a Macedonian television crew. They claimed that a "container," perhaps of weapons, was being given to the Albanians, for use against the Macedonian security forces. While American diplomats and NGO's scoff at such claims, it is well known that the KLA in Kosovo was armed by NATO, and that its core element retained power with the establishment of the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC), a kind of Albanian gendarmerie that has aided in both the expulsion of the Serbs, and the smuggling of weapons, guns and women, the last often to service NATO troops in Kosovo. And as recently as last summer, Albanians wounded in border-crossing shoot-outs were rushed to Camp Bondsteel for treatment. New evidence also attests to some kind of connection, though it cannot be determined whether this connection is of a formal or informal nature."

As the saying goes: "Same Sh*t, Different A**hole!"

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