PRISTINA, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - Kosovo's prime minister resigned Tuesday with plans to surrender to a U.N. court which he said has indicted him for alleged war crimes. But he insisted he was innocent of the charges.
| Isn't it great how the UN and NATO have solved the Kosovo problem? |
Ramush Haradinaj, who was in office for three months, said he would leave Wednesday for The Hague, Netherlands, where the tribunal is based. "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."
Haradinaj said his actions as an ethnic Albanian rebel commander during the 1998-99 war against Serb forces were consistent with international law. "I have behaved like an honorable man," he said.
Haradinaj suggested others were also named in the indictment. But neither he nor tribunal officials gave any details on the charges or on what crimes he allegedly committed. Serbian officials accuse him of command responsibility in the alleged killing of several Serb civilians by forces of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army in 1998, close to his home village of Glodjanje. They also mention the rapes of several Gypsy women and the killing of some Gypsy men - all part of a wedding party - by his forces shortly after the war near the town of Djakovica.
International officials appeared relieved that Haradinaj - a seasoned battlefield commander with a fiery temper and a loyal following - had decided to cooperate.
| Lord knows the UN couldn't have handled him otherwise. |
The ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo considers Haradinaj a hero in the struggle for independence from Serb rule. But most of the Serb minority hate him and other past leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army that fought former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's Serb forces. |