KOUCHNER VISITS KOSOVO TOWNS

PRISTINA, July 17 (Hina) - The United Nations' civil administrator for Kosovo, Bernard Kouchner, who arrived in the southern Yugoslav province on Thursday, on Saturday started a tour of Kosovo towns. Kouchner today visited Pec (western Kosovo), Prizren (southern Kosovo) and Mitrovica, in the north of the province. Kouchner called for reconciliation in Mitrovica, whose residents have been staging protests. In the meantime, the president of a provisional Kosovo government and political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Hashim Thaqi, was visiting Orahovac, in south-west Kosovo, currently under control of Dutch KFOR members. Thaqi spoke at a rally to Albanians protesting against the deployment of Russian KFOR troops in the area. Several incidents were reported in the last 24 hours, KFOR officials said today. An Albanian, believed to be a KLA soldier, was killed in downtown Djakovica. Circumstances of the murder have not been revealed. Two persons were wounded in Klina, and the body of a Serb was discovered in the village of Zitina near Gnjilane. In the northern part of Mitrovica, which is controlled by armed Serbs, French soldiers arrested four Serbs who were in possession of weapons. The KLA reported that three Albanians and a Serb were killed in an explosion at the town market in Vitina. Local Albanian sources said three witnesses to a Serbian massacre, which had occurred in the village of Cikatova on May 17, were discovered. The witnesses, who are in critical condition, were found by a group of children, after they had been hiding in a pit for more than two months. (hina) rml