KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY CLAIMS HAS 30 000 FIGHTERS

( Editorial: --> 4133+4098 ) PRISTINA, June 27 (Hina) - A Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) spokesman has announced it has 30,000 fighters organised in three brigades located in areas near the border, interior parts of the southern Yugoslav province and in the capital Pristina. In an interview with the Saudi Arabian newspaper "Al Hayat", carried on Saturday by Pristina Albanian-language daily "Bujku", UCK spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said the OVK command had nothing against calling a ceasefire. He said it was also open to dialogue with the Belgrade government, as long as it was made an equal partner in talks which had to be held with an international presence and on neutral terrain. "Our second condition is that Yugoslav Army special units be withdrawn to the barracks they were in before the latest battles," Krasniqi said. He rejected claims UCK troops included Mujahidin fighters and volunteers from Iran, Turkey, Croatia, Bosnia and Chechnya and military experts from Albania. Krasniqi said Albanian politicians in Kosovo were competing to become the UCK's political wing, and that at least 10 political parties had expressed this wish. He said the UCK command would decide on who would represent it politically, but that Albanians in Kosovo did not support any option except independence no matter how long bloody battles would last. Meanwhile, Parliamentary Party of Kosovo vice-president Bajram Kosumi has told a British diplomat that serious and genuine talks to resolve the situation in the southern Yugoslav province could not be held without including UCK. The statement by Kosumi, whose party was the first to offer becoming the UCK's political wing, was made during talks on Friday with David Slin, first secretary at the British Embassy in Belgrade. Speaking about American envoy Richard Holbrooke's encounter earlier this week with two UCK members in the village of Junik near Decani, Kosumi said the chance meeting had greatly changed the international community and Albanian political scene's relations towards the UCK. He said the meeting created conditions for a serious Albanian- Serbian dialogue in relation to Kosovo. Albanian Christian Democratic Party of Kosovo president Mark Krasniqi, also in talks with Slin, said the UCK had been formed by the people and today represented a reality which no one could ignore. (Hina) mbr /jn 271241 MET jun 98