Ominous signs from Kosovo, where the Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are threatening renewed violence if they do not get their way and establish an independent ethnic Albanian state. Fatos Bytyci of Reuters writes:

Veterans of Kosovo's 1998-99 guerrilla war said on Sunday they were prepared to take up arms again if deadlock between the West and Russia continued to block the province's independence from Serbia.

Veterans of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) warned the international bodies running the territory, primarily the United Nations, not to block the process.

Kosovo Albanian leaders "should not accept any delay to a status decision, nor new talks, which would bring only new hostility," the veterans said in a statement published in several Kosovo newspapers. They called on parliament to declare independence.

If the demands are not met, "we the veterans of the KLA war will be forced to act as KLA soldiers to fulfill the oath of our national heroes," the statement said.