Italy's Dini Rejects Kosovo Independence

ROME, Aug 14 (AFP) - The Balkans would be plunged into instability if Kosovo becomes a free country, Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini said in an interview published Saturday. "An independent Kosovo would be a factor of destabilization for the Balkans, for Macedonia, for Albania, for the precedent that it would set," he told La Repubblica newspaper.

Dini added: "If we start to create in the Balkans little states of one or two million people, we would soon have 20 (such entities)."

Dini said NATO -- which is on record as opposing Kosovo's independence -- did not enter Kosovo after its 11-week air war against Yugoslaiva "to give it to the Kosovo Liberation Army." He indicated that the alliance will give the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) a request to "act more vigorously" to protect the province's Serb minority from revenge attacks.

Kosovo should also get no reconstruction aid "if we do not see an effort to combat crime and drug trafficking," he said, adding that both were "on the rise."

On NATO's air campaign, Dini said he regretted a lack of "transparency" within the alliance, citing as an example the bombing of Serbian television studios in Belgrade "which Italy and other Europeans felt should not have been touched."

"Soldiers ought not to have free rein," he said, adding: "For some air raids, we were unable to understand who was deciding the targets -- the NATO supreme commander or the Pentagon."