U.N. employee killed after speaking Serbian in Kosovo

Police officials showed a black silk jacket inscribed with ''United States, New York,'' found near the body of 38-year-old Valentin Krumov. They said the garment had traces of blood on it - but could not immediately say whose - and it was left by one of the suspects fleeing the busy main street of Pristina.

Krumov, of Bulgaria, was shot Monday evening on Mother Teresa street in Kosovo's capital after arriving for duty earlier in the day.

''It seems like he was speaking Serbian, maybe Bulgarian,'' Lt. Col. Dmitry Kapotsev said. ''A crowd of local citizens assaulted him. He was taken by a mob ... and shot dead.''

Another U.N. police official, Inspector Gilles Moreau, said Krumov was beaten before being shot with a single bullet after a group of teen-agers asked for the time - apparently in Serbian. He responded in Serbian.

''One individual proceeded to hit him with his fist, and others kicked him,'' Moreau said. ''A large crowd gathered around the altercation. All of a sudden a shot was heard, the crowd dispersed and the body ... was on the ground, lifeless.''

He said the assailants were believed to be about 16 or 17 years old.

Krumov, who in May received his doctorate in political science from the University of Georgia, was shot near the Grand Hotel, the base for many employees of international organizations in Kosovo.

Police said a suspect escaped on foot, apparently helped by other residents crowding the street, which is turned into a pedestrian mall for several hours each night.

Two other U.N. employees who arrived in Pristina with Krumov on Monday were with him, but were not hurt, Moreau said.

Bernard Kouchner, the chief U.N. civilian administrator in Kosovo, called the killing ''unspeakable, barbaric and disgusting.''

''It is proof of the distance that separates us from ... reconciliation,'' he said during a visit to the European Parliament to appeal for support in rebuilding Kosovo. ''The mentalities need to change. It will take years.''

Krumov, believed to be the first U.N. staffer killed since the United Nations began running Kosovo in June, was shot just days before the first visit by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

In a statement Tuesday, Annan honored Krumov and two U.N. workers slain in Burundi by demanding that their killers be prosecuted and urging that their deaths not be in vain.

''All three made the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of peace,'' Annan's deputy spokesman, Manoel de Almeida e Silva said.

Krumov's slaying reflects the intensity of the hatred Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority feels toward Serbs four months after the end of an 18-month crackdown by Serb forces. The campaign, which left 10,000 people dead, ended with a Serb military and police pullout in June after months of NATO bombing.

A Polish police officer who did not want to be identified said he never speaks his own language because it could be mistaken for Serbian - both are Slavic languages and can sound similar to those unfamiliar with Polish. Ethnic Albanians themselves have reported threats when speaking Serbo-Croatian with visitors from Bosnia or Croatia.

Large-scale fighting ended with the arrival of the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force. But neither the peacekeepers nor international police who arrived in August have been able to quell sporadic ethnic violence - much of it directed against the dwindling Serb minority by ethnic Albanians seeking revenge.

Both Serbs and ethnic Albanians condemned Krumov's slaying.

Hashim Thaci, the former head of the disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army and the man many ethnic Albanians consider Kosovo's leader, called it ''a disgusting assassination ... an assassin's blow against the whole process of stabilizing the situation in Kosovo.''

Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency, which reflects the views of President Slobodan Milosevic, said ''ethnic cleansing, carried out by same methods as those in Nazi Germany, is under way in Kosovo'' and lamented that ''there are few places in Kosovo now where Serb language can be spoken freely.''

10-13-99