East Timor has the full attention of United Nations’ members these days but that has not stopped Hashim Thaci, leader of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), from criticising the UN role in Kosovo.

“What we are asking for is cooperation – we are not asking for a king,” said Thaci – who describes himself as KLA commander-in- chief and Kosovo’s “prime minister” – during a meeting with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday.

Thaci particularly is critical of Bernard Kouchner, the senior UN envoy in Kosovo and head of the UN Interim Administrative Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK). He claims that Kouchner has not allowed the KLA to participate fully in the Yugoslav province’s “process of transformation.”

Thaci is worried that the city of Mitrovica, where Serbs maintain their hold on the northern portion of the city, remains divided between the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanian majority. “This implies that a division of Kosovo is taking place,” he argues.

Other Kosovar Albanian leaders similarly have been critical of Kouchner and UNMIK which, they claim, has not adequately incorporated participation by the Albanian community.

“Kouchner and UNMIK behave with the people of Kosovo as if the people of Kosovo were at their service,” says Bajram Kosumi, a non-KLA member of the Kosovar leadership, designated by the separatist movement as “Minister of Information.”

Kosumi says UNMIK officials have had “no clear idea of what they had to do or how to go about it.” They have ended up incorporating officials from the “old guard,” who collaborated with Serbia during its period of dominance over Kosovo, he adds.

Kosumi is equally critical of UNMIK’s pay scale, noting that the UN mission’s pay for a concierge is 2,000 dollars a month, while educated Kosovars with doctorates earned only 200 dollars a month.

Kouchner, however, told IPS that his officials have taken pains to cooperate with Kosovo’s local population precisely so that UNMIK would not be seen as “an army of occupation.”

He concedes that the KLA has perceived itself to be “the liberators of Kosovo” after 11-weeks of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) attacks on Yugoslavia, ended with the departure of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.

Since then, the United nations estimates that 1.4 Albanians and 97,000 Serbs remain in Kosovo, with 73,000 Gypsies and other minorities also living in the nominally Yugoslav province.

Kouchner says tha, after the Serb-dominated forces left, “the KLA was occupying the vacuum,” and its role became a reality – which had to be accepted by UNMIK .

The KLA’s prominence, however, should not mean that the group can dominate Kosovo in the post-NATO era, Kouchner says.

“It’s certainly not acceptable that the KLA took everything everywhere,” he argues. “UNMIK just cannot work with only one side.”

To that end, UNMIK officials have conducted weekly meetings of the Kosovo Transitional Council, which incorporates a broad range of factions, and have even fostered meetings between Thaci and his rival, Ibrahim Rugova, the longtime leader of the Kosovar Albanians.

With the KLA scheduled to turn in their arms and be fully demilitarised by Sunday, the United Nations is hoping that the rebel force will be able to cooperate fully with UNMIK.

Thaci vowed Friday that his soldiers will comply with demilitarisation plans, but contends that it will be impossible to remove weapons from the hands of the Kosovars completely.

“We believe that the process of the demilitarisation and transformation of the KLA will be completely successful,” Thaci says. “Kosovo is awash with weapons that are not under our control. Weapons can be kept by individuals, and we do not control them.”

Demilitarisation is one of many areas where UNMIK and the KLA have sharply differing views.

The KLA has supported the formation of a “Kosovo Corps” that would largely comprise its fighters, which could circumvent the need to retire too many soldiers. But UN officials have contended the Kosovo Corps should be a lightly-armed force representing all of Kosovo’s ethnicities.

Meanwhile, the demilitarisation has proceeded, with reports that the KLA is turning in only lesser-quality arms while stockpiling weapons in neighbouring Albania and Macedonia. Thaci denied the reports.

Instead, the KLA leader complained that the Yugoslav forces had not abided by a UN resolution which required them to respect a 5- kilometre demilitarised zones from Kosovo’s border with Serbia.

Yet although Thaci urges respect of UN resolutions, he has dismissed the importance of the UN Security Council’s repeated assurances to respect the “sovereignty and territorial integirty of Yugoslavia” – language which could discourage Kosovo’s efforts to break away from Yugoslavia.

If the United Nations continues to uphold Yugoslavia’s territorial integrity, says Thaci, the democratic will of the Kosovars “will never be respected.”