PRISTINA Mass graves scattered across Kosovo contain an estimated 11,000 bodies, interim United Nations administrator Bernard Kouchner says. In an interview, he also dismissed descriptions of the 25-day-old UN Authority (UNMIK) as shambolic and Kosovo as a place sliding into anarchy. Although UNMIK was understaffed and lawlessness persisted, the crime rate was diminishing. "My only disappointment is the fact that we need a patrol of paratroopers to protect an elderly Serb lady going to the bakery," the former French health minister and founder of the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres told Reuters. Kouchner is running a new international protectorate in Kosovo guarded by 36,500 mostly NATO peacekeeping troops.

His tall task is to restore public services and build democracy in a brutalized Balkan backwater that has never known it. UN war crimes tribunal investigators who have fanned across Kosovo estimate that 11,000 ethnic Albanians lie in mass graves that they have begun excavating, Kouchner said. The early bane of UNMIK has been ethnic Albanians' thirst to avenge Serbian atrocities against civilians in a 16-month conflict between Kosovo's separatist majority and Belgrade's security forces -- and a lack of police to reinstate law and order.

(Reuter)