This led to the October 20th agreement with Belgrade, which
postulated a reduction in the levels of Yugoslav troops in the
province.
The KLA was all but ignored in these events. Rugova was not. He was
often consulted by the American negotiators and treated like a head
of state. The message was deafeningly clear: the KLA was a pawn on
the chessboard of war. It had no place where the civilized and the
responsible tread. It had no raison d'etre in peacetime. It reacted
by hitting a number of "Serb collaborators" (mostly of Gorani
extract - Muslim Slavs who speak a dialect of Albanian). One of the
disposed was Enver Maloku, Rugova's close associate.
On January 15, 1999, in the village of Racak, someone murdered
scores of people and dumped them by the roadside. The KLA blamed the
Serbs. The Serbs blamed the KLA and William Walker, the head of the
OSCE observer team. The media reports were inconclusive. While
everyone was fighting over the smouldering bodies, NATO was
preparing to attack and Walker withdrew his observer team from
Kosovo into an increasingly reluctant and enraged Macedonia. Faced
with sovereignty-infringing and regime-destabilizing demands at
Rambouillet, the Serbs declined. Under pressure and after days of
consultations, the Albanian delegation accepted the dictated draft
agreement hesitatingly.
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