U.N. interpreter abducted in Kosovo

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) -- United Nations police in Kosovo are negotiating with Serbs after an interpreter working with the U.N. was beaten and abducted in the northern city of Mitrovica, officials said.

The U.N. said the woman has not been seen since a group of Serbs attacked the vehicle which she and a U.N. police officer had been travelling in on Thursday. The officer was also beaten.

U.N. spokeswoman Claire Trevena said the Serbs had been angered by the arrest of two men and one woman during a weapons raid conducted in connection with a murder investigation.

A large number of weapons had been found in the Serb-dominated northern part of Mitrovica.

A U.N. police force spokesman in Kosovo said that as word spread about the weapons raid by special police teams and NATO-led KFOR peackeepers, people gathered in the streets.

They stopped a U.N. police car and beat the police officer and his female Serb interpreter, the spokesman, Dmitry Kaportsev, said.

A spokesman for the NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping forces said there had been a major weapons find.

"There were 11 AK-47 assault rifles, seven hand grenades, nine anti-tank rockets, two packages of plastic explosives, a rifle and a pistol and 1,500 rounds of ammunition," said KFOR spokesman Steven Shappell.

"This is one of the largest weapons finds in Mitrovica."

The town, divided into Serb and Albanian-dominated parts by a river guarded by KFOR troops, is a regular flashpoint in Kosovo, where violence still flares regularly a year-and-a-half after KFOR took over the province from Serb forces.

The troubles in northern Kosovo follow a period of violence on the southern border with Serbia where Yugoslav police have reported renewed action by ethnic-Albanian militia despite an agreed ceasefire.

Last month, the insurgents allegedly killed four Serb policemen when they seized several strategic positions on the Yugoslav side of the Kosovo boundary.

Yugoslavia's leaders and NATO officials have been trying to resolve increasing tension across Kosovo -- a republic within the Yugoslav federation which has been run by the western military alliance since the 1999 conflict.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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KFOR
NATO
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

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