Status As Terrorist Group
The Yugoslav authorities, under Slobodan Milošević, regarded the KLA a terrorist group. In February 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, condemned both the actions of Serb government and of the KLA, and described the KLA as, "without any questions, a terrorist group". UN resolution 1160 took a similar stance.
But the 1997 US Department's terrorist list hadn't included the KLA. In March 1998, just one month later Gerbald had to modify his statements to say that KLA had not been classified legally by the U.S. government as a terrorist group, and the US government approached the KLA leaders to make them interlocutors with the Serbs. A Wall Street Journal article claimed later that the US government had in February 1998 removed the KLA from the list of terrorist organizations, a removal that has never been confirmed. France didn't delist the KLA until late 1998, after strong US and UK lobbying. KLA is still present in the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base list of terrorist groups, and is listed as an inactive terrorist organization by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism from the Homeland Security.
During the war, the KLA troops collaborated with the NATO troops, and they were qualified by the NATO as "freedom fighters". In late 1999 the KLA was disbanded and its members entered the Kosovo Protection Corps.
Read more about this topic: Kosovo Liberation Army
Famous quotes containing the words status, terrorist and/or group:
“What is clear is that Christianity directed increased attention to childhood. For the first time in history it seemed important to decide what the moral status of children was. In the midst of this sometimes excessive concern, a new sympathy for children was promoted. Sometimes this meant criticizing adults. . . . So far as parents were put on the defensive in this way, the beginning of the Christian era marks a revolution in the child’s status.”
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“The terrorist and the policeman both come from the same basket. Revolution, legality—counter-moves in the same game; forms of idleness at bottom identical.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“My routines come out of total unhappiness. My audiences are my group therapy.”
—Joan Rivers (b. 1935)