Huge arms find in Kosovo

The bunkers had recently been opened, K-For said

British-led peacekeepers in Kosovo have uncovered the largest store of illegal arms found since fighting ended in the province a year ago.

Four underground bunkers were discovered during a search near Klecka, a former stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation Army in the Drenica valley west of the regional capital Pristina.

They wouldn't have been digging it up if they weren't going to use it

Brigadier Richard Shirreff, head of British K-For troops

Six tonnes of arms have so far been removed from the bunkers.

"You've got enough here to start a small war," said British Major Simon Marr.

In the first concrete bunker to be cleared - 10 metres long by three metres wide (30 feet by 10 feet) - K-For soldiers found:

• tripod-mounted heavy machine guns;
• hundreds of rifles, mortars, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers;
• anti-tank and anti-personnel mines;
• flak jackets;
• large quantities of ammunition;
• and communications equipment.

K-For soldiers had to use explosives to blow the steel doors off the bunkers.

An officer at the scene told reporters that between the initial discovery on Friday and the resumption of the search on Saturday morning, unknown people had scattered spikes on the approach road to hinder operations.

Non-compliance

The arsenal lies less than a kilometre from the summer headquarters of General Agim Ceku, who heads the Kosovo Protection Corps, the civilian successor to the KLA.

The KPC stands accused of non-compliance with K-For regulations

The commander of British forces in Kosovo, Brigadier Richard Shirreff, said it was inconceivable that the KPC knew nothing of the weapons cache.

"This is a very significant find. This represents a major weapons haul. It is almost certainly entirely Albanian, all evidence we got here suggests that it is former KLA material," he said.

"This is a degree of non-compliance."

He said that the bunkers had been opened within the last two weeks and arms may have been removed.

"They wouldn't have been digging it up if they weren't going to use it," said Brigadier Shirreff.

Anti-Serb violence

Finnish, Norwegian and Czech units were also among the 400 K-For troops who took part in the operation.

Sources among them said some of the weapons had been placed there recently and that a list of individual owners of rifles had been found.

That might indicate that Kosovo Albanians had hidden the weapons in the bunkers, rather than hand them over to K-For.

The discovery comes after a recent upsurge in anti-Serb violence that on Thursday saw two Serbs killed by an anti-tank mine near Pristina, bringing the Serbian death toll to 10 in three weeks.