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 as, status, terrorist and/or group:
“screenwriter
Policemen so cherish their status as keepers of the peace and protectors of the public that they have occasionally been known to beat to death those citizens or groups who question that status.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“Anthropologists have found that around the world whatever is considered “men’s work” is almost universally given higher status than “women’s work.” If in one culture it is men who build houses and women who make baskets, then that culture will see house-building as more important. In another culture, perhaps right next door, the reverse may be true, and basket- weaving will have higher social status than house-building.”
—Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen. Excerpted from, Gender Grace: Love, Work, and Parenting in a Changing World (1990)
“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)
“Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She’s been elected.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)