Displaced Serbs rally for UN Kosovo mission

BELGRADE, Apr 26 (Reuters) Thousands of Serbs displaced from Kosovo camped on the border of the breakaway province today as 15 UN Security Council ambassadors began an assessment of Serbia's case against giving it independence.

They hope to win the sympathy of Council states which may be asked to decide in the next month or two whether Serbia's insistence on preserving its territorial sovereignty should overrule the wishes of Kosovo's 90 per cent Albanian majority.

''There are about 2,500 people here now and they keep arriving, with their own cars, with buses, we expect there to be some 12,000 during the day,'' said Goran Savovic, deputy head of the association of expelled and displaced from Kosovo.

They were relaxed, he said, many happy to meet old friends not seen since they fled the province in 1999. But there was no word on whether the UN ambassadors would visit them.

The three-day mission began with talks in Belgrade, with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and President Boris Tadic. It goes on later to Kosovo, where Serbs and Albanians aim to prove they have suffered most at the hands of the other.

The United Nations has run the province since June 1999 when NATO drove out Serb forces to halt the killing of ethnic Albanian civilians during an insurgency. About 10,000 Albanians were killed and a million temporarily driven out.

Albanians in their turn took revenge on Serbs and up to 200,000 fled, although the figure is disputed. Some 100,000 remain, half living in isolated enclaves under NATO protection.

WOUNDS ON DISPLAY ''When you fly by helicopter you can't see all the misery, the horror of the Serb villages,'' said Sanda Raskovic Ivic, head of Serbia's Coordination Centre for Kosovo.

UN officials said the ambassadors would travel by car.

The daily Blic quoted a UN official in Kosovo as saying Serbia would claim 200,000 Serbs were driven out of Kosovo and lost their property. But the ambassadors would be shown proof that 29,800 property claims had been filed and all resolved.

''I'd return home, because in eight years living as a refugee in Serbia I haven't been able to cope,'' said Zlatko Vujovic, 29.

''But how can I return when most of my Serb neighbours have left..? I'd return if the Albanians would guarantee my safety.'' The head of the association of displaced Serbs, Nebojsa Jovic, told Reuters: ''We don't want to return to our homes by force, or irritate UNMIK (the UN administration) or Albanians.

We want an organised, secure and sustainable return.'' The mission, which continues on Friday and Saturday with visits to Kosovo Albanian communities and Serb enclaves, is part of a test of wills between the West on the one hand and Serbia and Russia on the other over the plan by U.N. envoy Martti Ahitsaari to make Kosovo independent under EU supervision.

It was instigated by Russia, a permanent Security Council member with veto power, which advocates more time for talks to find a compromise solution for Kosovo.

The West has concluded compromise is impossible.

REUTERS JS VV1647