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Tuesday, November 28 12:52 AM SGT

Nine Kosovo Albanians detained ahead of "Flag Day"

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia, Nov 27 (AFP) -

NATO-led troops detained nine Kosovo Albanians Monday on the eve of "Flag Day",
a celebration
of Albanian nationalism which last year was marred by violence against the Serb
minority.

Major Peter Cameron said the nine "suspected intimidators" were arrested in the
central Kosovo
town of Obilic in a series of dawn raids carried out by 400 British and
Norwegian troops and 45
UN police officers.

"The objective was to search and recover evidence on those who are thought to be
intimidating
others, and arrest suspects where evidence of illegal activity was recovered,"
he told a Pristina press
conference.

Tuesday is "Flag Day" in Kosovo, a celebration of Albanian nationalism which was
marked last year
for the first time in the province since the arrival of the NATO-led KFOR
peacekeeping force and
the province's UN administration.

Last year's noisy celebrations turned violent in many cases, most famously in
the capital Pristina
where a Serbian university professor was dragged from his car and murdered by a
nationalist mob.

November 28 is key date in Albanian national consciousness, both in Albania
itself and in the
Yugoslav province of Kosovo where around 90 percent of the estimated 1.9 million
population are
ethnic Albanian.

It is on this date in the mid-15th century that George Kastriote, who entered
history under the name
of Skanderbeg, became Albania's national hero -- raising what was to become the
national flag, a
double-headed eagle on a red background, over the captured citadel of Kruja.

It is also the anniversary of Albania's declaration of independence in 1912, and
of the arrival of
Communist leader Enver Hoxha's partisans in Tirana in 1944.

The Albanian banner became an emotive symbol of resistance to Yugoslav rule in
Kosovo, and in
1997 the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) chose November 28 to make their
first public
appearance, at a funeral for a man killed by Serbian police attended by 20,000
people.

UN police appealed for calm ahead of this year's celebrations, which will be
marked by parades
across the province, and UN administrator Bernard Kouchner was to go on local
television and urge
Kosovo Albanians to enjoy the holiday in peace, his spokeswoman Susan Manuel
said.

Monday's raids were intended to send a signal that KFOR would not tolerate
extremists exploiting
the festival to attack minority groups, Cameron said. Obilic is an ethnically
mixed town where Serbs
and Roma gypsies live alongside Albanians and are regularly the victims of
ethnically motivated
violence.

Following a landmine attack in October which killed a Serbian man, KFOR launched
an operation
against suspected extremists in the area and while low level harrassment has
continued, Cameron
said, there have been no more killings.

"There is no question of KFOR taking sides in this," Cameron said, "The
co-existence and tolerance
of all ethnic groups is necessary for normalisation of life in Kosovo."

Kosovo has been administered by the United Nations since June last year, when a
NATO bombing
campaign forced Yugoslavia to abandon its attempt to put down the KLA uprising
using brutal
tactics of murder and mass eviction.

Before the war it was banned by the Belgrade authorities, but ever since the red
and black banner
can be seen almost everywhere in the province, appearing on shops, homes and
cars, and at every
ceremony from marriages to the inauguration of municipal councils.