An advance party of Russian peacekeepers heading for the Kosovo town of Orahovac turned back yesterday after encountering a huge roadblock set up by local ethnic Albanians.
Albanians at the head of a column of stationary tractors, trucks and cars stretching about 1 km along a winding hillside road told the troops they were not welcome because Russian mercenaries took part in Serb atrocities in the area.
Dutch troops have patrolled Orahovac, about 40 km southwest of Pristina, since the NATO-led Kfor peacekeeping force moved into Kosovo in mid-June, but on Friday the Dutch were ordered to make way for the Russians.
The advance party, in two jeeps and an armoured personnel carrier, rolled up to the roadblock on yesterday morning.
"What's the problem here?" asked Col Andrey Serdukov, deputy commander of Russian contingent in Kosovo.
"Russians are the problem," replied one of the ethnic Albanians, who have also expressed fears that Russian troops would let any war crimes suspects holed up in the Serb enclave of the town slip away if they take over.
"We will stay here until someone comes to tell us that Russians are not coming to Orahovac," a spokesman for the Albanians told Col Serdukov.
"No one will come to tell you that because there is an international agreement that the Russian army will come to Orahovac," replied the Russian officer.
Russians face general hostility across Kosovo from ethnic Albanians, who distrust the country's traditionally close ties with Serbia, but yesterday's protest was perhaps the most spectacular sign of that hostility since Kfor moved into Kosovo.
After talking to the ethnic Albanians for several minutes, the advance party drove back to a Russian base in the nearby town of Malisevo to decide on its next move.
Col Serdukov urged the Albanians to talk with the Russians about how to make the handover from the Dutch as smooth as possible.
"There is no chance of us sitting down here with people who killed us and raped us," said the Albanians' spokesman, who declined to give his name.
"The Russian army did not come here to kill and rape. Maybe bandits did that. We have some bandits in our country too," Col Serdukov replied. "Our task is to cement peace here."
The Albanians, many of whom spent the night sleeping in their vehicles scattered along the main road from Pristina, said they had set up roadblocks at all entrances to the town.
Meanwhile, three Serbs arrested on suspicion of war crimes by Kfor peacekeeping troops in Orahovac will be tried by a district court in Kosovo, not in The Hague, the UN said yesterday.
"The three suspects are currently detained in the prison of Prizren [in south-west Kosovo], guarded by Kfor," a spokeswoman for the UN Mission in Kosovo said.
The Kosovo conflict will cost Yugoslavia almost £40 billion, according to a report published yesterday. The Economist Intelligence Unit said the 11-week bombing campaign inflicted enormous damage on the economy and infrastructure and would mean the economy would shrink dramatically in years to come.
Its report estimated gross domestic product, income per head of population, would contract by 40 per cent this year and continue to stay at levels far below that of 10 years ago.
Yugoslavia will also become the poorest country in Europe, below Albania, measured on GDP, according to the study. A spokesman for the unit said: "The estimate of the economic cost of the war to Yugoslavia is based on a comparison of gross domestic product flows over time between those that would have occurred in the absence of war and those that are now likely to be achieved during the period of recovery."