Displaced Serbs To Rally For UN Kosovo Visit

Displaced Kosovo Serbs plan to gather on Kosovo border during visit gather on the border, to show their inability to return home in safety.

Displaced Kosovo Serbs plan to gather on the border of breakaway Kosovo province during next week's visit by a U.N. fact-finding mission, to display their inability to return home in safety.

"There will be a large number of women and children there to summon the members of the Security Council to come and see the people who want to return," said Goran Savovic, deputy chair of the association of displaced and expelled Serbs.

Kosovo has been under U.N. rule since 1999 when NATO drove out Serb forces to stop them committing atrocities against the majority ethnic Albanian population during a counter-insurgency.

Over 100,000 Serbs fled revenge attacks by Albanians when the U.N. entered the province in 1999. The actual figure is disputed. Some 100,000 remain in the province, half concentrated in the north and the rest in enclaves throughout the province.

The U.N. is considering proposals by envoy Martti Ahtisaari to give Kosovo independence under European Union supervision, after a year of fruitless talks between Serbs and Albanians.

Serbia rejects the plan and wants further talks.

Serbia's Orthodox Christian ally Russia persuaded the U.N. to send a fact-finding mission to Kosovo next week to see the situation before it starts addressing Ahtisaari's Kosovo plan.

The mission will visit Belgrade and Kosovo from April 25 to 28, and be headed by Belgium, currently one of the 15 members of the Security Council.

Its aim is to obtain first-hand information on progress made in Kosovo towards democratic standards, and "receive information directly" from Serb and Kosovo leaders as well as representatives of Kosovo's ethnic minorities communities.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, visiting Serbia on Thursday, insisted the mission must go to the isolated Serb enclaves and not just hold talks in office capitals.

Serbia insists U.N. resolution 1244 of 1999 was never fully implemented, especially concerning standards for the minority Serbs in the province.

"We will show them that the situation is not as rosy as the U.N. mission in charge of Kosovo wants to portray," said Milan Ivanovic, a Kosovo Serb leader. "Not even one percent of the expelled Serbs have returned to Kosovo."

He predicted 10,000 would turn up. But previous calls for Kosovo Serbs to rally have yielded disappointing results for organisers, and the U.N. has accused Serbia of dissuading would-be returnees in order to bolster its case. Ivanovic feared the U.N. mission might not be given the chance to visit enclaves and to meet Serbs who would be able to give them a true picture of how things stood.

"We are inviting the mission to visit the enclaves where it will see with its own eyes the difficult life and lack of security of these people," he said.